Quantification of the arctic sea ice-driven atmospheric circulation variability in coordinated large ensemble simulations

• Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
• Main Authors: Liang, Yu‐Chiao, Kwon, Young-Oh, Frankignoul, Claude, Danabasoglu, Gokhan, Yeager, Stephen G., Cherchi, Annalisa, Gao, Yongqi, Gastineau, Guillaume, Ghosh, Rohit, Matei, Daniela, Mecking, Jennifer V., Peano, Daniele, Suo, Lingling, Tian, Tian
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2019
• Subjects: Arctic; Suo; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/25579

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Liang, Y., Kwon, Y., Frankignoul, C., Danabasoglu, G., Yeager, S., Cherchi, A., Gao, Y., Gastineau, G., Ghosh, R., Matei, D., Mecking, J., V., Peano, D., Suo, L., & Tian, T. Quantification of the arctic sea ice-driven atmospheric circulation variability in coordinated large ensemble simulations. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(1), (2020): e2019GL085397, doi:10.1029/2019GL085397. A coordinated set of large ensemble atmosphere‐only simulations is used to investigate the impacts of observed Arctic sea ice‐driven variability (SIDV) on the atmospheric circulation during 1979–2014. The experimental protocol permits separating Arctic SIDV from internal variability and variability driven by other forcings including sea surface temperature and greenhouse gases. The geographic pattern of SIDV is consistent across seven participating models, but its magnitude strongly depends on ensemble size. Based on 130 members, winter SIDV is ~0.18 hPa2 for Arctic‐averaged sea level pressure (~1.5% of the total variance), and ~0.35 K2 for surface air temperature (~21%) at interannual and longer timescales. The results suggest that more than 100 (40) members are needed to separate Arctic SIDV from other components for dynamical (thermodynamical) variables, and insufficient ensemble size always leads to overestimation of SIDV. Nevertheless, SIDV is 0.75–1.5 times as large as the variability driven by other forcings over northern Eurasia and Arctic. The authors thank Editor Christina Patricola and two anonymous reviewers for their comprehensive and insightful comments, which have led to improved presentation of this manuscript. We acknowledge support by the Blue‐Action Project (European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, 727852, http://www.blue‐action.eu/index.php?id = 3498). The WHOI‐NCAR group is also supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) ...