Arctic sea ice in CMIP5 climate model projections and their seasonal variability

Acta Oceanologica Sinica - Tập 36 - Trang 1-8 - 2017
Fei Huang1,2,3, Xiao Zhou1,2, Hong Wang1,2
1Physical Oceanography Laboratory/CIMST, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China
2Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, China
3Ningbo Collabrative Innovation Center of Nonlinear Harzard System of Ocean and Atmosphere, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China

Tóm tắt

This paper is focused on the seasonality change of Arctic sea ice extent (SIE) from 1979 to 2100 using newly available simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). A new approach to compare the simulation metric of Arctic SIE between observation and 31 CMIP5 models was established. The approach is based on four factors including the climatological average, linear trend of SIE, span of melting season and annual range of SIE. It is more objective and can be popularized to other comparison of models. Six good models (GFDL-CM3, CESM1-BGC, MPI-ESM-LR, ACCESS-1.0, HadGEM2-CC, and HadGEM2-AO in turn) are found which meet the criterion closely based on above approach. Based on ensemble mean of the six models, we found that the Arctic sea ice will continue declining in each season and firstly drop below 1 million km2 (defined as the ice-free state) in September 2065 under RCP4.5 scenario and in September 2053 under RCP8.5 scenario. We also study the seasonal cycle of the Arctic SIE and find out the duration of Arctic summer (melting season) will increase by about 100 days under RCP4.5 scenario and about 200 days under RCP8.5 scenario relative to current circumstance by the end of the 21st century. Asymmetry of the Arctic SIE seasonal cycle with later freezing in fall and early melting in spring, would be more apparent in the future when the Arctic climate approaches to “tipping point”, or when the ice-free Arctic Ocean appears. Annual range of SIE (seasonal melting ice extent) will increase almost linearly in the near future 30–40 years before the Arctic appears ice-free ocean, indicating the more ice melting in summer, the more ice freezing in winter, which may cause more extreme weather events in both winter and summer in the future years.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Barron E J. 1983. A warm, equable cretaceous: the nature of the problem. Earth Sci Rev, 19(4): 305–338 Bekryaev R V, Polyakov I V, Alexeev V A. 2010. Role of polar amplification in long-term surface air temperature variations and modern arctic warming. J Climate, 23(14): 3888–3906 Cavalieri D J, Gloersen P, Parkinson C L, et al. 1997. Observed hemispheric asymmetry in global sea ice changes. Science, 278(5340): 1104–1106 Cavalieri D J, Parkinson C L, Gloersen P, et al. 1999. Deriving long-term time series of sea ice cover from satellite passive-microwave multisensor data sets. J Geophys Res, 104(C7): 15803–15814 Chapman W L, Walsh J E. 1993. Recent variations of sea ice and air temperature in high latitudes. Bull Am Meteorol Soc, 74(1): 33–48 Comiso J C, Parkinson C L, Gersten R, et al. 2008. Accelerated decline in the Arctic sea ice cover. Geophys Res Lett, 35(1): L01703 Easterling D R, Wehner M F. 2009. Is the climate warming or cooling?. Geophys Res Lett, 36(8): L08706 Francis J A, Vavrus S J. 2012. Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes. Geophys Rev Lett, 39(6): L06801 Francis J A, Vavrus S J. 2015. Evidence for a wavier jet stream in response to rapid Arctic warming. Environ Res Lett, 10(1): 014005 Holland M M, Bitz C M. 2003. Polar amplification of climate change in coupled models. Clim Dynam, 21(3-4): 221–232 Huang Fei, Di Hui, Hu Beibei, et al. 2014. Decadal regime shift of Arctic sea ice and corresponding changes of extreme low temperature. Clim Change Res Lett (in Chinese), 3(2): 39–45 Huang Fei, Shan Xiaolin, Fan Tingting. 2011. Decadal change of annual range for the Arctic sea ice in recent 30 years. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference. Maui, Hawaii, USA: International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers, 978–985 Kosaka Y, Xie S P. 2013. Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling. Nature, 501(7467): 403–407 Lenton T M. 2012. Arctic climate tipping points. AMBIO, 41(1): 10–22 Liu Jiping, Curry J, Wang Huijun, et al. 2012. Impact of declining Arctic sea ice on winter snowfall. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 109(11): 4074–4079 Liu Jiping, Song Mirong, Horton R M, et al. 2013. Reducing spread in climate model projections of a September ice-free Arctic. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 110(31): 12571–12576 Lu Jianhua, Cai Ming. 2009. Seasonality of polar surface warming amplification in climate simulations. Geophys Res Lett, 36(16): L16704 Manabe S, Wetherald R T. 1975. The effects of doubling the CO2 concentration on the climate of a general circulation model. J Atmos Sci, 32(1): 3–15 Masson-Delmotte V, Kageyama M, Braconnot P, et al. 2006. Past and future polar amplification of climate change: climate model intercomparisons and ice-core constraints. Climate Dyn, 26(5): 513–529 Niu Lu, Huang Fei, Zhou Xiao. 2015. Decadal regime shift of Arctic sea ice and associated decadal variability of Chinese freezing rain. Haiyang Xuebao (in Chinese), 37(11): 105–117 Parkinson C L, Cavalieri D J, Gloersen P, et al. 1999. Arctic sea ice extents, areas, and trends, 1978–1996. J Geophys Res, 104(C9): 20837–20856 Polyakov I V, Alekseev G V, Bekryaev R V, et al. 2002. Observationally based assessment of polar amplification of global warming. Geophys Res Lett, 29(18): 25-1–25-4 Screen J A, Simmonds I. 2010. The central role of diminishing sea ice in recent arctic temperature amplification. Nature, 464(7293): 1334–1337 Serreze M C, Barry R G. 2011. Processes and impacts of Arctic amplification: a research synthesis. Glob Planetary Change, 77(1–2): 85–96 Serreze M C, Francis J A. 2006. The Arctic amplification debate. Climate Change, 76(3–4): 241–264 Serreze M C, Holl M M, Stroeve J. 2007. Perspectives on the Arctic’s shrinking sea-ice cover. Science, 315(5818): 1533–1536 Stroeve J, Holland M M, Meier W, et al. 2007. Arctic sea ice decline: faster than forecast. Geophys Res Lett, 34(9): L09501 Wadhams P. 2012. Arctic ice cover, ice thickness and tipping points. AMBIO, 41(1): 23–33 Wang Hong, Zhou Xiao, Huang Fei. 2015. Response of dominant mode for atmospheric circulation in northern hemisphere to the accelerated decline of Arctic sea ice: I. The Arctic Oscillation. Haiyang Xuebao (in Chinese), 37(11): 57–67 Zhu Chenyu, Huang Fei, Shi Yunhao, et al. 2014. Spatial-temporal patterns of the cold surge events in China in recent 50 years and its relationship with Arctic sea ice. Period Ocean Univ China, 44(12): 12–20