Attributing Greenland Warming Patterns to Regional Arctic Sea Ice Loss

Pedersen, Rasmus A.; Christensen, Jens Hesselbjerg

doi:10.1029/2019gl083828

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Enhanced summer melting at low elevation areas of the GrIS, as found here, is also a robust response to reduced Arctic sea ice cover (Rennermalm et al 2009;Noël et al 2014;Stroeve et al 2017;Pedersen and Christensen 2019). Liu et al (2016) argue that the primary mechanism for the increased surface melt of the GrIS is through increased LW in by atmospheric warming caused by sea ice loss.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

“…McIlhattan et al ( 2020 ) shows that Arctic precipitation frequency from liquid-containing clouds has increased in CESM2 with respect to CESM1 during all months of the year, and the annual mean is very high (0.642) in CESM2 compared to observations (0.129). However, the total amount of precipitation in CESM2 has not increased in comparison to CESM1.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Influence of Arctic sea-ice loss on the Greenland ice sheet climate

2021

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The Arctic is the region on Earth that is warming the fastest. At the same time, Arctic sea ice is reducing while the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is losing mass at an accelerated pace. Here, we study the seasonal impact of reduced Arctic sea ice on GrIS surface mass balance (SMB), using the Community Earth System Model version 2.1 (CESM2), which features an advanced, interactive calculation of SMB. Addressing the impact of sea-ice reductions on the GrIS SMB from observations is difficult due to the short observational records. Also, signals detected using transient climate simulations may be aliases of other forcings. Here, we analyze dedicated simulations from the Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project with reduced Arctic sea ice and compare them with preindustrial sea ice simulations while keeping all other forcings constant. In response to reduced sea ice, the GrIS SMB increases in winter due to increased precipitation, driven by the more humid atmosphere and increasing cyclones. In summer, surface melt increases due to a warmer, more humid atmosphere providing increased energy transfer to the surface through the sensible and latent heat fluxes, which triggers the melt-albedo feedback. Further, warming occurs throughout the entire troposphere over Baffin Bay. This deep warming results in regional enhancement of the 500 hPa geopotential heights over the Baffin Bay and Greenland, increasing blocking and heat advection over the GrIS’ surface. This anomalous circulation pattern has been linked to recent increases in the surface melt of the GrIS.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Influence of Arctic sea-ice loss on the Greenland ice sheet climate

2021

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“…Potentially, a combination of these dynamic and thermodynamic processes play a role in contributing to the near‐surface air temperature warming focused in the west/south edge of Greenland that is captured in both climate model and observationally‐based analyses (Screen, 2017; Ballinger et al ., 2018; Pedersen and Christensen, 2019). Of note, the local sea ice influence on air temperatures tends to be confined to low‐elevation areas due to mesoscale wind features, such as katabatic flows, that frequently prevent the penetration of turbulent heat from the local marine environment upslope past the lower ablation zone (Ballinger et al ., 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of blocking circulation and emerging open water feedbacks on Greenland cold‐season air temperature variability over the last century

Ballinger

Hanna

et al. 2020

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Substantial marine, terrestrial, and atmospheric changes have occurred over the Greenland region during the last century. Several studies have documented record-levels of Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) summer melt extent during the 2000s and 2010s, but relatively little work has been carried out to assess regional climatic changes in other seasons. Here, we focus on the less studied cold-season (i.e., autumn and winter) climate, tracing the long-term (1873-2013) variability of Greenland's air temperatures through analyses of coastal observations and model-derived outlet glacier series and their linkages with North Atlantic sea ice, sea surface temperature (SST), and atmospheric circulation indices. Through a statistical framework, large amounts of west and south Greenland temperature variance (up to r 2~5 0%) can be explained by the seasonally-contemporaneous combination of the Greenland Blocking Index (GBI) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO; hereafter the combination of GBI and NAO is termed GBI). Lagged and concomitant regional sea-ice concentration (SIC) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) seasonal indices account for small amounts of residual air temperature variance

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“…Its sea ice loss contributes the largest portion to the pan-Arctic sea ice declining trend during boreal winter and spring (Onarheim et al 2015(Onarheim et al , 2018, and it has experienced strong natural fluctuations at interannual, decadal, and longer time scales in the past decades (Onarheim and Årthun 2017). Many studies showed that the BS sea ice variability has likely exerted profound impacts on local weather and climate (Kohnemann et al 2017;Pedersen and Christensen 2019), ecosystem (Dalpadado et al 2014), Arctic commercial shipping (Eicken 2013;Smith and Stephenson 2013;Melia et al 2016;Pizzolato et al 2016;Laliberté et al 2016), fishery activities (Hollowed et al 2013;Haug et al 2017), and natural resource extraction (Jung et al 2016). Extensive studies also argued that BS sea ice change could have far-reaching influences on weather and climate in lower latitudes via altering large-scale atmospheric circulations in a way that resembles the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) (e.g., Cohen et al 2014;Kim et al 2014;Overland et al 2015;García-Serrano et al 2015;Kretschmer et al 2016;Sorokina et al 2016;Screen 2017;Zhang et al 2019; and many others), although this topic has been controversial (e.g., Overland et al 2016;Screen et al 2018;Blackport et al 2019;Cohen et al 2020;Peings 2019;Blackport and Screen 2020;Dai and Song 2020;Liang et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autumn Arctic Pacific Sea Ice Dipole as a Source of Predictability for Subsequent Spring Barents Sea Ice Condition

2021

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This study uses observational and reanalysis datasets in 1980-2016 to show a close connection between a boreal autumn sea-ice dipole in the Arctic Pacific sector and sea-ice anomalies in the Barents Sea (BS) during the following spring. The September-October Arctic Pacific sea-ice dipole variations are highly correlated with the subsequent April-May BS sea-ice variations (r=0.71). The strong connection between the regional sea-ice variabilities across the Arctic uncovers a new source of predictability for spring BS sea-ice prediction at 7-month lead time. A cross-validated linear regression prediction model using the Arctic Pacific sea-ice dipole with 7-month lead time is demonstrated to have significant prediction skills with 0.54-0.85 anomaly correlation coefficients. The autumn sea-ice dipole, manifested as sea-ice retreat in the Beaufort-Chukchi Seas and expansion in the East Siberian-Laptev Seas, is primarily forced by preceding atmospheric shortwave anomalies from late spring to early autumn. The spring BS sea-ice increases are mostly driven by an ocean-to-sea ice heat flux reduction in preceding months, associated with reduced horizontal ocean heat transport into the BS. The dynamical linkage between the two regional sea-ice anomalies is suggested to involve positive stratospheric polar cap anomalies during autumn and winter, with its center slowly moving toward Greenland. The migration of the stratospheric anomalies is followed in mid-winter by a negative North Atlantic Oscillation-like pattern in the troposphere, leading to reduced ocean heat transport into the BS and sea-ice extent increase.

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Attributing Greenland Warming Patterns to Regional Arctic Sea Ice Loss

Cited by 12 publications

References 46 publications

Influence of Arctic sea-ice loss on the Greenland ice sheet climate

Influence of Arctic sea-ice loss on the Greenland ice sheet climate

The role of blocking circulation and emerging open water feedbacks on Greenland cold‐season air temperature variability over the last century

Autumn Arctic Pacific Sea Ice Dipole as a Source of Predictability for Subsequent Spring Barents Sea Ice Condition

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