Sea ice perturbations in aquaplanet simulations: Isolating the physical climate responses from model interventions ...

• Main Authors: England, Mark, Feldl, Nicole
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences 2023
• Subjects: Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.57757/iugg23-1262; https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5017328

<!--!introduction!--> Comprehensive climate model simulations with perturbed sea ice covers have been extensively used to assess the impact of future sea ice loss, suggesting substantial climate changes both in the high latitudes and beyond. However, previous work using an idealized energy balance model calls into question the methodologies that are used to perturb sea ice cover, demonstrating a consistent overestimate of the warming due to sea ice loss, while the large complexity gap between the idealized and comprehensive models makes the implications of this result unclear. To bridge this gap we have performed simulations with a new implementation of the CESM2 model in a slab-ocean aquaplanet configuration coupled with thermodynamic sea ice, which is able to capture the realistic seasonal characteristics of polar climate change. Using this model setup, we perform a suite of experiments to systematically quantify the spurious climate responses associated with melting sea ice without a CO2 forcing. We ... : The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023) ...