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As a step towards understanding the fundamental drivers of polar climate change, we evaluate contributions to polar warming and its seasonal and hemispheric asymmetries in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) as compared with CMIP5. CMIP6 models broadly capture the observed pattern of surface- and winter-dominated Arctic warming that has outpaced both tropical and Antarctic warming in recent decades. For both CMIP5 and CMIP6, CO 2 quadrupling experiments reveal that the lapse-rate and surface albedo feedbacks contribute most to stronger warming in the Arctic than the tropics or Antarctic. The relative strength of the polar surface albedo feedback in comparison to the lapse-rate feedback is sensitive to the choice of radiative kernel, and the albedo feedback contributes most to intermodel spread in polar warming at both poles. By separately calculating moist and dry atmospheric heat transport, we show that increased poleward moisture transport is another important driver of Arctic amplification and the largest contributor to projected Antarctic warming. Seasonal ocean heat storage and winter-amplified temperature feedbacks contribute most to the winter peak in warming in the Arctic and a weaker winter peak in the Antarctic. In comparison with CMIP5, stronger polar warming in CMIP6 results from a larger surface albedo feedback at both poles, combined with less-negative cloud feedbacks in the Arctic and increased poleward moisture transport in the Antarctic. However, normalizing by the global-mean surface warming yields a similar degree of Arctic amplification and only slightly increased Antarctic amplification in CMIP6 compared to CMIP5.
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Sea Ice Loss, Water Vapor Increases, and Their Interactions with Atmospheric Energy Transport in Driving Seasonal Polar Amplification
Abstract The ice–albedo feedback associated with sea ice loss contributes to polar amplification, while the water vapor feedback contributes to tropical amplification of surface warming. However, these feedbacks are not independent of atmospheric energy transport, raising the possibility of complex interactions that may obscure the drivers of polar amplification, in particular its manifestation across the seasonal cycle. Here, we apply a radiative transfer hierarchy to an idealized aquaplanet global climate model coupled to a thermodynamic sea ice model. The climate responses and radiative feedbacks are decomposed into the contributions from sea ice loss, including both retreat and thinning, and the radiative effect of water vapor changes. We find that summer sea ice retreat causes winter polar amplification through ocean heat uptake and release, and the resulting decrease in dry energy transport weakens the magnitude of warming. Moreover, sea ice thinning is found to suppress summer warming and enhance winter warming, additionally contributing to winter amplification. The water vapor radiative effect produces seasonally symmetric polar warming via offsetting effects: enhanced moisture in the summer hemisphere induces the summer water vapor feedback and simultaneously strengthens the winter latent energy transport in the winter hemisphere by increasing the meridional moisture gradient. These results reveal the importance of changes in atmospheric energy transport induced by sea ice retreat and increased water vapor to seasonal polar amplification, elucidating the interactions among these physical processes.
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- PAR ID:
- 10497669
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Meteorological Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Climate
- Volume:
- 37
- Issue:
- 8
- ISSN:
- 0894-8755
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2713 to 2725
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0219.1
