Arctic open-water periods are projected to lengthen dramatically by 2100

Details

• Journal Title:
  Communications Earth & Environment
• Personal Author:
  Crawford, Alex ; Stroeve, Julienne ; Smith, Abigail ; Jahn, Alexandra
• NOAA Program & Office:
  CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences)
• Description:
  The shrinking of Arctic-wide September sea ice extent is often cited as an indicator of modern climate change; however, the timing of seasonal sea ice retreat/advance and the length of the open-water period are often more relevant to stakeholders working at regional and local scales. Here we highlight changes in regional open-water periods at multiple warming thresholds. We show that, in the latest generation of models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), the open-water period lengthens by 63 days on average with 2 °C of global warming above the 1850-1900 average, and by over 90 days in several Arctic seas. Nearly the entire Arctic, including the Transpolar Sea Route, has at least 3 months of open water per year with 3.5 °C warming, and at least 6 months with 5 °C warming. Model bias compared to satellite data suggests that even such dramatic projections may be conservative.
• Keywords:
  Arctic Modelling
• Source:
  Commun Earth Environ 2, 109
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00183-x
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Rights Information:
  CC BY
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:4b1eb0d2285a365820f68851f26167c554d564a5a618f88f37de1dacffe92d47
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/45030/noaa_45030_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 3.86 MB ]