Does ocean coupling matter for the northern extratropical response to projected Arctic sea ice loss?

Details

• Journal Title:
  Geophysical Research Letters
• Personal Author:
  Deser, Clara ; Sun, Lantao ; Tomas, Robert A. ; Screen, James
• NOAA Program & Office:
  OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; ESRL (Earth System Research Laboratory) ; CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences)
• Description:
  The question of whether ocean coupling matters for the extratropical Northern Hemisphere atmospheric response to projected late 21st century Arctic sea ice loss is addressed using a series of experiments with Community Climate System Model version 4 at 1 degrees spatial resolution under different configurations of the ocean model component: no interactive ocean, thermodynamic slab ocean, and full-depth (dynamic plus thermodynamic) ocean. Ocean-atmosphere coupling magnifies the response to Arctic sea ice loss but does not change its overall structure; however, a slab ocean is inadequate for inferring the role of oceanic feedbacks. The westerly winds along the poleward flank of the eddy-driven jet weaken in response to Arctic sea ice loss, accompanied by a smaller-magnitude strengthening on the equatorward side, with largest amplitudes in winter. Dynamical and thermodynamic oceanic feedbacks amplify this response by approximately 50%. Air temperature, precipitation, and sea level pressure responses also show sensitivity to the degree of ocean coupling.
• Source:
  Geophysical Research Letters, 43(5), 2149-2157.
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL067792
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Rights Information:
  CC BY
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:0eee8e09a3878029633fdc3e53b93e47bb29f60b5f8a11ddf462d8041b281dc9
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/14528/noaa_14528_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 5.79 MB ]