Ultrafast Arctic amplification and its governing mechanisms

• Published in: Environmental Research: Climate
• Main Authors: Tyler P Janoski, Michael Previdi, Gabriel Chiodo, Karen L Smith, Lorenzo M Polvani
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 2023
• Subjects: Arctic amplification; sea ice; heat transport; turbulent heat flux; radiative feedback; Meteorology. Climatology; QC851-999; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Arctic; albedo; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1088/2752-5295/ace211; https://doaj.org/article/152ef96ec8524db194014c0329879522

Arctic amplification (AA), defined as the enhanced warming of the Arctic compared to the global average, is a robust feature of historical observations and simulations of future climate. Despite many studies investigating AA mechanisms, their relative importance remains contested. In this study, we examine the different timescales of these mechanisms to improve our understanding of AA’s fundamental causes. We use the Community Earth System Model v1, Large Ensemble configuration (CESM-LE), to generate large ensembles of 2 years simulations subjected to an instantaneous quadrupling of CO _2 . We show that AA emerges almost immediately (within days) following CO _2 increase and before any significant loss of Arctic sea ice has occurred. Through a detailed energy budget analysis of the atmospheric column, we determine the time-varying contributions of AA mechanisms over the simulation period. Additionally, we examine the dependence of these mechanisms on the season of CO _2 quadrupling. We find that the surface heat uptake resulting from the different latent heat flux anomalies between the Arctic and global average, driven by the CO _2 forcing, is the most important AA contributor on short (<1 month) timescales when CO _2 is increased in January, followed by the lapse rate feedback. The latent heat flux anomaly remains the dominant AA mechanism when CO _2 is increased in July and is joined by the surface albedo feedback, although AA takes longer to develop. Other feedbacks and energy transports become relevant on longer (>1 month) timescales. Our results confirm that AA is an inherently fast atmospheric response to radiative forcing and reveal a new AA mechanism.