Near-term and Large-scale Coupled Climate System Responses to Arctic Sea-ice Loss

• Main Authors: Amelie, Simon, Gastineau, Guillaume, Frankignoul, Claude, Codron, Francis
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2020
• Subjects: Arctic; Pacific; albedo; north atlantic current; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3706583; https://zenodo.org/record/3706583

Rapid changes in the Arctic have been observed and are expected to be amplified in future. However, the influence of Arctic sea-ice decline on global climate remains under debate. We focus on a modeling analysis of the ocean-atmosphere responses to a near-term Arctic sea-ice loss (corresponding to the period 2035-2055 under the RCP8.5 scenario). With the coupled model IPSL-CM5A2, two different methods to melt Arctic sea-ice are implemented to estimate the robustness of the protocol. We will show that modifying the albedo or changing the thermal conductivity of the Arctic sea-ice show similar pattern responses but with different magnitude. It is also found that, at the 10% significance level, Arctic sea-ice decline leads to large-scale circulation responses such as a negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) associated with southward shift of the westerlies; an expansion north of the North Atlantic current; a weaker Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) linked to a shallower mix layer depth at subpolar North Atlantic deep-convection site; a southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ); a tropical Pacific cooling and a positive Southern Annular Mode (SAM).