Impact of regionally increased CO2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations
In which direction is the influence larger: from the Arctic to the mid-latitudes or vice versa? To answer this question, CO2 concentrations have been regionally increased in different latitudinal belts, namely in the Arctic, in the northern mid-latitudes, everywhere outside of the Arctic and globall...
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ftdatacite:10.5281/zenodo.3565412 2023-05-15T14:32:27+02:00 Impact of regionally increased CO2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations Semmler, Tido Pithan, Felix Jung, Thomas 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3565412 https://zenodo.org/record/3565412 en eng Zenodo https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3565411 Open Access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess CC-BY Arctic Amplification; Arctic mid-latitude linkages; regional greenhouse gas forcing; energy transport; coupled climate model simulations Text Journal article article-journal ScholarlyArticle 2019 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3565412 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3565411 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z In which direction is the influence larger: from the Arctic to the mid-latitudes or vice versa? To answer this question, CO2 concentrations have been regionally increased in different latitudinal belts, namely in the Arctic, in the northern mid-latitudes, everywhere outside of the Arctic and globally, in a series of 150 year coupled model experiments with the AWI Climate Model. This method is applied to allow a decomposition of the response to increasing CO2 concentrations in different regions. It turns out that CO2 increase applied in the Arctic only is very efficient in heating the Arctic and that the energy largely remains in the Arctic. In the first 30 years after switching on the CO2 forcing some robust atmospheric circulation changes, which are associated with the surface temperature anomalies including local cooling of up to 1°C in parts of North America, are simulated. The synoptic activity is decreased in the mid-latitudes. Further into the simulation, surface temperature and atmospheric circulation anomalies become less robust. When quadrupling the CO2 concentration south of 60°N, the March Arctic sea ice volume is reduced by about two thirds in the 150 years of simulation time. When quadrupling the CO2 concentration between 30 and 60°N, the March Arctic sea ice volume is reduced by around one third, the same amount as if quadrupling CO2 north of 60°N. Both atmospheric and oceanic northward energy transport across 60°N are enhanced by up to 0.1 PW and 0.03 PW, respectively, and winter synoptic activity is increased over the Greenland, Norwegian, Iceland (GIN) seas. To a lesser extent the same happens when the CO2 concentration between 30 and 60°N is only increased to 1.65 times the reference value in order to consider the different size of the forcing areas. The increased northward energy transport, leads to Arctic sea ice reduction, and consequently Arctic amplification is present without Arctic CO2 forcing in all seasons but summer, independent of where the forcing is applied south of 60°N. South of the forcing area, both in the Arctic and northern mid-latitude forcing simulations, the warming is generally limited to less than 0.5°C. In contrast, north of the forcing area in the northern mid-latitude forcing experiments, the warming amounts to generally more than 1°C close to the surface, except for summer. This is a strong indication that the influence of warming outside of the Arctic on the Arctic is substantial, while forcing applied only in the Arctic mainly materializes in a warming Arctic, with relatively small implications for non-Arctic regions. Text Arctic Greenland Iceland Sea ice DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Arctic Greenland |
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Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
English |
topic |
Arctic Amplification; Arctic mid-latitude linkages; regional greenhouse gas forcing; energy transport; coupled climate model simulations |
spellingShingle |
Arctic Amplification; Arctic mid-latitude linkages; regional greenhouse gas forcing; energy transport; coupled climate model simulations Semmler, Tido Pithan, Felix Jung, Thomas Impact of regionally increased CO2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations |
topic_facet |
Arctic Amplification; Arctic mid-latitude linkages; regional greenhouse gas forcing; energy transport; coupled climate model simulations |
description |
In which direction is the influence larger: from the Arctic to the mid-latitudes or vice versa? To answer this question, CO2 concentrations have been regionally increased in different latitudinal belts, namely in the Arctic, in the northern mid-latitudes, everywhere outside of the Arctic and globally, in a series of 150 year coupled model experiments with the AWI Climate Model. This method is applied to allow a decomposition of the response to increasing CO2 concentrations in different regions. It turns out that CO2 increase applied in the Arctic only is very efficient in heating the Arctic and that the energy largely remains in the Arctic. In the first 30 years after switching on the CO2 forcing some robust atmospheric circulation changes, which are associated with the surface temperature anomalies including local cooling of up to 1°C in parts of North America, are simulated. The synoptic activity is decreased in the mid-latitudes. Further into the simulation, surface temperature and atmospheric circulation anomalies become less robust. When quadrupling the CO2 concentration south of 60°N, the March Arctic sea ice volume is reduced by about two thirds in the 150 years of simulation time. When quadrupling the CO2 concentration between 30 and 60°N, the March Arctic sea ice volume is reduced by around one third, the same amount as if quadrupling CO2 north of 60°N. Both atmospheric and oceanic northward energy transport across 60°N are enhanced by up to 0.1 PW and 0.03 PW, respectively, and winter synoptic activity is increased over the Greenland, Norwegian, Iceland (GIN) seas. To a lesser extent the same happens when the CO2 concentration between 30 and 60°N is only increased to 1.65 times the reference value in order to consider the different size of the forcing areas. The increased northward energy transport, leads to Arctic sea ice reduction, and consequently Arctic amplification is present without Arctic CO2 forcing in all seasons but summer, independent of where the forcing is applied south of 60°N. South of the forcing area, both in the Arctic and northern mid-latitude forcing simulations, the warming is generally limited to less than 0.5°C. In contrast, north of the forcing area in the northern mid-latitude forcing experiments, the warming amounts to generally more than 1°C close to the surface, except for summer. This is a strong indication that the influence of warming outside of the Arctic on the Arctic is substantial, while forcing applied only in the Arctic mainly materializes in a warming Arctic, with relatively small implications for non-Arctic regions. |
format |
Text |
author |
Semmler, Tido Pithan, Felix Jung, Thomas |
author_facet |
Semmler, Tido Pithan, Felix Jung, Thomas |
author_sort |
Semmler, Tido |
title |
Impact of regionally increased CO2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations |
title_short |
Impact of regionally increased CO2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations |
title_full |
Impact of regionally increased CO2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations |
title_fullStr |
Impact of regionally increased CO2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations |
title_full_unstemmed |
Impact of regionally increased CO2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations |
title_sort |
impact of regionally increased co2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations |
publisher |
Zenodo |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3565412 https://zenodo.org/record/3565412 |
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Arctic Greenland |
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Arctic Greenland |
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Arctic Greenland Iceland Sea ice |
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Arctic Greenland Iceland Sea ice |
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https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3565411 |
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Open Access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3565412 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3565411 |
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