Improvement in simulation of Eurasian winter climate variability with a realistic Arctic sea ice condition in an atmospheric GCM

• Published in: Environmental Research Letters
• Main Authors: Young-Kwon Lim, Yoo-Geun Ham, Jee-Hoon Jeong, Jong-Seong Kug
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 2012
• Subjects: sea-ice; mid-latitude winter climate; atmospheric GCM; Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering; TD1-1066; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Science; Q; Physics; QC1-999; Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044041; https://doaj.org/article/c941c3a0b9a54315a75385b3173e7316

The present study investigates how much a realistic Arctic sea ice condition can contribute to improve simulation of the winter climate variation over the Eurasia region. Model experiments are set up using different sea ice boundary conditions over the past 24 years (i.e., 1988–2011). One is an atmospheric model inter-comparison (AMIP) type of run forced with observed sea-surface temperature (SST), sea ice, and greenhouse gases (referred to as Exp RSI), and the other is the same as Exp RSI except for the sea ice forcing, which is a repeating climatological annual cycle (referred to as Exp CSI). Results show that Exp RSI produces the observed dominant pattern of Eurasian winter temperatures and their interannual variation better than Exp CSI (correlation difference up to ∼0.3). Exp RSI captures the observed strong relationship between the sea ice concentration near the Barents and Kara seas and the temperature anomaly across Eurasia, including northeastern Asia, which is not well captured in Exp CSI. Lagged atmospheric responses to sea ice retreat are examined using observations to understand atmospheric processes for the Eurasian cooling response including the Arctic temperature increase, sea-level pressure increase, upper-level jet weakening and cold air outbreak toward the mid-latitude. The reproducibility of these lagged responses by Exp RSI is also evaluated.