Impacts of Arctic sea ice on cold season atmospheric variability and trends estimated from observations and a multi-model large ensemble

• Published in: Journal of Climate
• Main Authors: Liang, Yu-Chiao, Frankignoul, Claude, Kwon, Young‐Oh, Gastineau, Guillaume, Manzini, Elisa, Danabasoglu, Gokhan, Suo, Lingling, Yeager, Stephen, Gao, Yongqi, Attema, Jisk, Cherchi, Annalisa, Ghosh, Rohit, Matei, Daniela, Mecking, Jennifer, Tian, Tian, Zhang, Ying
• Other Authors: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Océan et variabilité du climat (VARCLIM), Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques (LOCEAN), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace (IPSL (FR_636)), École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-École polytechnique (X)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Paris Cité (UPCité)-École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-École polytechnique (X)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Paris Cité (UPCité)-Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace (IPSL (FR_636)), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-École polytechnique (X)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Paris Cité (UPCité), Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder (NCAR), Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center Bergen (NERSC), Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research (BCCR), Department of Biological Sciences Bergen (BIO / UiB), University of Bergen (UiB)-University of Bergen (UiB), Nansen-Zhu International Research Center (NZC), Institute of Atmospheric Physics Beijing (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing (CAS)-Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing (CAS), Netherlands eScience Center, CNR Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), National Research Council of Italy, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia - Sezione di Bologna (INGV), Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Department of Meteorology Reading, University of Reading (UOR), National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOC), University of Southampton, Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing (CAS), European Project: 727852,Blue-Action(2016)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; Sea ice; Atmospheric circulation; Climate models; [PHYS.PHYS.PHYS-GEO-PH]Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Geophysics [physics.geo-ph]; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03608156; https://hal.science/hal-03608156/document; https://hal.science/hal-03608156/file/%5B15200442%20-%20Journal%20of%20Climate%5D%20Impacts%20of%20Arctic%20Sea%20Ice%20on%20Cold%20Season%20Atmospheric%20Variability%20and%20Trends%20Estimated%20from%20Observations%20and%20a%20Multimodel%20Large%20Ensemble.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0578.1

International audience To examine the atmospheric responses to Arctic sea-ice variability in the Northern Hemisphere cold season (October to following March), this study uses a coordinated set of large-ensemble experiments of nine atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) forced with observed daily-varying sea-ice, sea-surface temperature, and radiative forcings prescribed during the 1979-2014 period, together with a parallel set of experiments where Arctic sea ice is substituted by its climatology. The simulations of the former set reproduce the near-surface temperature trends in reanalysis data, with similar amplitude, and their multi-model ensemble mean (MMEM) shows decreasing sea-level pressure over much of the polar cap and Eurasia in boreal autumn. The MMEM difference between the two experiments allows isolating the effects of Arctic sea-ice loss, which explain a large portion of the Arctic warming trends in the lower troposphere and drives a small but statistically significant weakening of the wintertime Arctic Oscillation. The observed interannual co-variability between sea-ice extent in the Barents-Kara Seas and lagged atmospheric circulation is distinguished from the effects of confounding factors based on multiple regression, and quantitatively compared to the co-variability in MMEMs. The interannual sea-ice decline followed by a negative North Atlantic Oscillation-like anomaly found in observations is also seen in the MMEM differences, with consistent spatial structure but much smaller amplitude. This result suggests that the sea-ice impacts on trends and interannual atmospheric variability simulated by AGCMs could be underestimated, but caution is needed because internal atmospheric variability may have affected the observed relationship.