Forcing and impact of the Northern Hemisphere continental snow cover in 1979-2014

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: Gastineau, Guillaume, Frankignoul, Claude, Gao, Yongqi, Liang, Yu-Chiao, Kwon, Young-Oh, Cherchi, Annalisa, Ghosh, Rohit, Manzini, Elisa, Matei, Daniela, Mecking, Jennifer, Suo, Lingling, Tian, Tian, Yang, Shuting, Zhang, Ying
• Other Authors: 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), Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center Bergen (NERSC), National Taïwan University (NTU), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), Nansen-Zhu International Research Center (NZC), Institute of Atmospheric Physics Beijing (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing (CAS)-Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing (CAS), ANR-19-JPOC-0003,ROADMAP,The Role of ocean dynamics and Ocean-Atmosphere interactions in Driving cliMAte variations and future Projections of impact-relevant extreme events(2019), European Project: 727852,Blue-Action(2016)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2023
• Subjects: [SDU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Arctic; Sea ice; The Cryosphere
• Online Access: https://insu.hal.science/insu-04139554; https://insu.hal.science/insu-04139554/document; https://insu.hal.science/insu-04139554/file/tc-17-2157-2023.pdf; https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-2157-2023

International audience The main drivers of the continental Northern Hemisphere snow cover are investigated in the 1979-2014 period. Four observational datasets are used as are two large multi-model ensembles of atmosphere-only simulations with prescribed sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice concentration (SIC). A first ensemble uses observed interannually varying SST and SIC conditions for 1979-2014, while a second ensemble is identical except for SIC with a repeated climatological cycle used. SST and external forcing typically explain 10 % to 25 % of the snow cover variance in model simulations, with a dominant forcing from the tropical and North Pacific SST during this period. In terms of the climate influence of the snow cover anomalies, both observations and models show no robust links between the November and April snow cover variability and the atmospheric circulation 1 month later. On the other hand, the first mode of Eurasian snow cover variability in January, with more extended snow over western Eurasia, is found to precede an atmospheric circulation pattern by 1 month, similar to a negative Arctic oscillation (AO). A decomposition of the variability in the model simulations shows that this relationship is mainly due to internal climate variability. Detailed outputs from one of the models indicate that the western Eurasia snow cover anomalies are preceded by a negative AO phase accompanied by a Ural blocking pattern and a stratospheric polar vortex weakening. The link between the AO and the snow cover variability is strongly related to the concomitant role of the stratospheric polar vortex, with the Eurasian snow cover acting as a positive feedback for the AO variability in winter. No robust influence of the SIC variability is found, as the sea ice loss in these simulations only drives an insignificant fraction of the snow cover anomalies, with few agreements among models.