Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment
While climate models broadly agree on the changes expected to occur over the Arctic with global warming on a pan-Arctic scale (i.e. polar amplification, sea ice loss, and increased precipitation), the magnitude and patterns of these changes at regional and local scales remain uncertain. This limits...
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Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
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European Geosciences Union
2024
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Online Access: | http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537951/ https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537951/1/esd-15-1161-2024.pdf https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1161/2024/ |
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ftnerc:oai:nora.nerc.ac.uk:537951 2024-09-30T14:27:54+00:00 Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment Levine, Xavier J. Williams, Ryan S. Marshall, Gareth Orr, Andrew Seland Graff, Lise Handorf, Dörthe Karpechko, Alexey Köhler, Raphael Wijngaard, René R. Johnston, Nadine Lee, Hanna Nieradzik, Lars Mooney, Priscilla A. 2024-08-26 text http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537951/ https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537951/1/esd-15-1161-2024.pdf https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1161/2024/ en eng European Geosciences Union https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537951/1/esd-15-1161-2024.pdf Levine, Xavier J.; Williams, Ryan S. orcid:0000-0002-3185-3909 Marshall, Gareth orcid:0000-0001-8887-7314 Orr, Andrew orcid:0000-0001-5111-8402 Seland Graff, Lise; Handorf, Dörthe; Karpechko, Alexey; Köhler, Raphael; Wijngaard, René R.; Johnston, Nadine orcid:0000-0003-2211-1492 Lee, Hanna; Nieradzik, Lars; Mooney, Priscilla A. 2024 Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment. Earth System Dynamics, 15 (4). 1161-1177. https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1161-2024 <https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1161-2024> cc_by_4 Publication - Article PeerReviewed 2024 ftnerc https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1161-2024 2024-09-03T23:47:14Z While climate models broadly agree on the changes expected to occur over the Arctic with global warming on a pan-Arctic scale (i.e. polar amplification, sea ice loss, and increased precipitation), the magnitude and patterns of these changes at regional and local scales remain uncertain. This limits the usability of climate model projections for risk assessments and their impact on human activities or ecosystems (e.g. fires and permafrost thawing). Whereas any single or ensemble mean projection may be of limited use to stakeholders, recent studies have shown the value of the storyline approach in providing a comprehensive and tractable set of climate projections that can be used to evaluate changes in environmental or societal risks associated with global warming. Here, we apply the storyline approach to a large ensemble of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models with the aim of distilling the wide spread in model predictions into four physically plausible outcomes of Arctic summertime climate change. This is made possible by leveraging strong covariability in the climate system associated with well-known but poorly constrained teleconnections and local processes; specifically, we find that differences in Barents–Kara sea warming and lower-tropospheric warming over polar regions among CMIP6 models explain most of the inter-model variability in pan-Arctic surface summer climate response to global warming. Based on this novel finding, we compare regional disparities in climate change across the four storylines. Our storyline analysis highlights the fact that for a given amount of global warming, certain climate risks can be intensified, while others may be lessened, relative to a “middle-of-the-road” ensemble mean projection. We find this to be particularly relevant when comparing climate change over terrestrial and marine areas of the Arctic which can show substantial differences in their sensitivity to global warming. We conclude by discussing the potential implications of our findings ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Arctic Climate change Global warming Ice Kara Sea permafrost Sea ice Natural Environment Research Council: NERC Open Research Archive Arctic Kara Sea Earth System Dynamics 15 4 1161 1177 |
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Open Polar |
collection |
Natural Environment Research Council: NERC Open Research Archive |
op_collection_id |
ftnerc |
language |
English |
description |
While climate models broadly agree on the changes expected to occur over the Arctic with global warming on a pan-Arctic scale (i.e. polar amplification, sea ice loss, and increased precipitation), the magnitude and patterns of these changes at regional and local scales remain uncertain. This limits the usability of climate model projections for risk assessments and their impact on human activities or ecosystems (e.g. fires and permafrost thawing). Whereas any single or ensemble mean projection may be of limited use to stakeholders, recent studies have shown the value of the storyline approach in providing a comprehensive and tractable set of climate projections that can be used to evaluate changes in environmental or societal risks associated with global warming. Here, we apply the storyline approach to a large ensemble of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models with the aim of distilling the wide spread in model predictions into four physically plausible outcomes of Arctic summertime climate change. This is made possible by leveraging strong covariability in the climate system associated with well-known but poorly constrained teleconnections and local processes; specifically, we find that differences in Barents–Kara sea warming and lower-tropospheric warming over polar regions among CMIP6 models explain most of the inter-model variability in pan-Arctic surface summer climate response to global warming. Based on this novel finding, we compare regional disparities in climate change across the four storylines. Our storyline analysis highlights the fact that for a given amount of global warming, certain climate risks can be intensified, while others may be lessened, relative to a “middle-of-the-road” ensemble mean projection. We find this to be particularly relevant when comparing climate change over terrestrial and marine areas of the Arctic which can show substantial differences in their sensitivity to global warming. We conclude by discussing the potential implications of our findings ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Levine, Xavier J. Williams, Ryan S. Marshall, Gareth Orr, Andrew Seland Graff, Lise Handorf, Dörthe Karpechko, Alexey Köhler, Raphael Wijngaard, René R. Johnston, Nadine Lee, Hanna Nieradzik, Lars Mooney, Priscilla A. |
spellingShingle |
Levine, Xavier J. Williams, Ryan S. Marshall, Gareth Orr, Andrew Seland Graff, Lise Handorf, Dörthe Karpechko, Alexey Köhler, Raphael Wijngaard, René R. Johnston, Nadine Lee, Hanna Nieradzik, Lars Mooney, Priscilla A. Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment |
author_facet |
Levine, Xavier J. Williams, Ryan S. Marshall, Gareth Orr, Andrew Seland Graff, Lise Handorf, Dörthe Karpechko, Alexey Köhler, Raphael Wijngaard, René R. Johnston, Nadine Lee, Hanna Nieradzik, Lars Mooney, Priscilla A. |
author_sort |
Levine, Xavier J. |
title |
Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment |
title_short |
Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment |
title_full |
Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment |
title_fullStr |
Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment |
title_full_unstemmed |
Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment |
title_sort |
storylines of summer arctic climate change constrained by barents–kara seas and arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment |
publisher |
European Geosciences Union |
publishDate |
2024 |
url |
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537951/ https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537951/1/esd-15-1161-2024.pdf https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1161/2024/ |
geographic |
Arctic Kara Sea |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Kara Sea |
genre |
Arctic Arctic Climate change Global warming Ice Kara Sea permafrost Sea ice |
genre_facet |
Arctic Arctic Climate change Global warming Ice Kara Sea permafrost Sea ice |
op_relation |
https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537951/1/esd-15-1161-2024.pdf Levine, Xavier J.; Williams, Ryan S. orcid:0000-0002-3185-3909 Marshall, Gareth orcid:0000-0001-8887-7314 Orr, Andrew orcid:0000-0001-5111-8402 Seland Graff, Lise; Handorf, Dörthe; Karpechko, Alexey; Köhler, Raphael; Wijngaard, René R.; Johnston, Nadine orcid:0000-0003-2211-1492 Lee, Hanna; Nieradzik, Lars; Mooney, Priscilla A. 2024 Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment. Earth System Dynamics, 15 (4). 1161-1177. https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1161-2024 <https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1161-2024> |
op_rights |
cc_by_4 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1161-2024 |
container_title |
Earth System Dynamics |
container_volume |
15 |
container_issue |
4 |
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1161 |
op_container_end_page |
1177 |
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1811633862168543232 |