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Abstract Traditional feedback analyses, which assume that individual climate feedback mechanisms act independently and add linearly, suggest that clouds do not contribute to Arctic amplification. However, feedback locking experiments, in which the cloud feedback is disabled, suggest that clouds, particularly outside of the Arctic, do contribute to Arctic amplification. Here, we reconcile these two perspectives by introducing a framework that quantifies the interactions between radiative feedbacks, radiative forcing, ocean heat uptake, and atmospheric heat transport. We show that including the cloud feedback in a comprehensive climate model can result in Arctic amplification because of interactions with other radiative feedbacks. The surface temperature change associated with including the cloud feedback is amplified in the Arctic by the surface-albedo, Planck, and lapse-rate feedbacks. A moist energy balance model with a locked cloud feedback exhibits similar behavior as the comprehensive climate model with a disabled cloud feedback and further indicates that the mid-latitude cloud feedback contributes to Arctic amplification via feedback interactions. Feedback locking in the moist energy balance model also suggests that the mid-latitude cloud feedback contributes substantially to the intermodel spread in Arctic amplification across comprehensive climate models. These results imply that constraining the mid-latitude cloud feedback will greatly reduce the intermodel spread in Arctic amplification. Furthermore, these results highlight a previously unrecognized non-local pathway for Arctic amplification. 

Enhanced warming of the Arctic region relative to the rest of the globe, known as Arctic amplification, is caused by a variety of diverse factors, many of which are influenced by the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Here, we quantify the role of AMOC changes in Arctic amplification throughout the twenty-first century by comparing two suites of climate model simulations under the same climate change scenario but with two different AMOC states: one with a weakened AMOC and another with a steady AMOC. We find that a weakened AMOC can reduce annual mean Arctic warming by 2 °C by the end of the century. A primary contributor to this reduction in warming is surface albedo feedback, related to a smaller sea ice loss due to AMOC slowdown. Another major contributor is the changes in ocean heat uptake. The weakened AMOC and its associated anomalous ocean heat transport divergence lead to increased ocean heat uptake and surface cooling. These two factors are inextricably linked on seasonal timescales, and their relative importance for Arctic amplification can vary by season. The weakened AMOC can also abate Arctic warming via lapse rate feedback, creating marked cooling from the surface to lower-to-mid troposphere while resulting in relatively weaker cooling in the upper troposphere. Additionally, the weakened AMOC increases the low-level cloud fraction over the North Atlantic warming hole, causing significant cooling there via shortwave (sw) cloud feedback despite the overall effect of sw cloud feedback being a slight warming of the average temperature over the Arctic. 

Abstract In recent decades, Arctic-amplified warming and sea-ice loss coincided with a prolonged wintertime Eurasian cooling trend. This observed Warm Arctic–Cold Eurasia pattern has occasionally been attributed to sea-ice forced changes in the midlatitude atmospheric circulation, implying an anthropogenic cause. However, comprehensive climate change simulations do not produce Eurasian cooling, instead suggesting a role for unforced atmospheric variability. This study seeks to clarify the source of this model-observation discrepancy by developing a statistical approach that enables direct comparison of Arctic-midlatitude interactions. In both historical simulations and observations, we first identify Ural blocking as the primary causal driver of sea ice, temperature, and circulation anomalies consistent with the Warm Arctic–Cold Eurasia pattern. Next, we quantify distinct transient responses to this Ural blocking, which explain the model-observation discrepancy in historical Eurasian temperature. Observed 1988–2012 Eurasian cooling occurs in response to a pronounced positive trend in Ural sea-level pressure, temporarily masking long-term midlatitude warming. This observed sea-level pressure trend lies at the outer edge of simulated variability in a fully coupled large ensemble, where smaller sea-level pressure trends have little impact on the ensemble mean temperature trend over Eurasia. Accounting for these differences bring observed and simulated trends into remarkable agreement. Finally, we quantify the influence of sea-ice loss on the magnitude of the observed Ural sea-level pressure trend, an effect that is absent in historical simulations. These results illustrate that sea-ice loss and tropospheric variability can both play a role in producing Eurasian cooling. Furthermore, by conducting a direct model-observation comparison, we reveal a key difference in the causal structures characterizing the Warm Arctic–Cold Eurasia Pattern, which will guide ongoing efforts to explain the lack of Eurasian cooling in climate change simulations. 

Abstract Radiative feedbacks govern the Earth's climate sensitivity and elucidate the geographic patterns of climate change in response to a carbon‐dioxide forcing. We develop an analytical model for patterned radiative feedbacks that depends only on changes in local surface temperature. The analytical model combines well‐known moist adiabatic theory with the radiative‐advective equilibrium that describes the energy balance in high latitudes. Together with a classic analytical function for surface albedo, all of the non‐cloud feedbacks are represented. The kernel‐based analytical feedbacks reproduce the feedbacks diagnosed from global climate models at the global, zonal‐mean, and seasonal scales, including in the polar regions, though with less intermodel spread. The analytical model thus provides a framework for a quantitative understanding of radiative feedbacks from simple physics, independent of the detailed atmospheric and cryospheric responses simulated by comprehensive climate models. 

Abstract The recent Arctic sea ice loss is a key driver of the amplified surface warming in the northern high latitudes, and simultaneously a major source of uncertainty in model projections of Arctic climate change. Previous work has shown that the spread in model predictions of future Arctic amplification (AA) can be traced back to the inter-model spread in simulated long-term sea ice loss. We demonstrate that the strength of future AA is further linked to the current climate’s, observable sea ice state across the multi-model ensemble of the 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). The implication is that the sea-ice climatology sets the stage for long-term changes through the 21st century, which mediate the degree by which Arctic warming is amplified with respect to global warming. We determine that a lower base-climate sea ice extent and sea ice concentration (SIC) in CMIP6 models enable stronger ice melt in both future climate and during the seasonal cycle. In particular, models with lower Arctic-mean SIC project stronger future ice loss and a more intense seasonal cycle in ice melt and growth. Both processes systemically link to a larger future AA across climate models. These results are manifested by the role of climate feedbacks that have been widely identified as major drivers of AA. We show in particular that models with low base-climate SIC predict a systematically stronger warming contribution through both sea-ice albedo feedback and temperature feedbacks in the future, as compared to models with high SIC. From our derived linear regressions in conjunction with observations, we estimate a 21st-century AA over sea ice of 2.47–3.34 with respect to global warming. Lastly, from the tight relationship between base-climate SIC and the projected timing of an ice-free September, we predict a seasonally ice-free Arctic by mid-century under a high-emission scenario. 

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. 

Abstract The polar regions are predicted to experience the largest relative change in precipitation in response to increased greenhouse-gas concentrations, where a substantial absolute increase in precipitation coincides with small precipitation rates in the present-day climate. The reasons for this amplification, however, are still debated. Here, we use an atmospheric energy budget to decompose regional precipitation change from climate models under greenhouse-gas forcing into contributions from atmospheric radiative feedbacks, dry-static energy flux divergence changes, and surface sensible heat flux changes. The polar-amplified relative precipitation change is shown to be a consequence of the Planck feedback, which, when combined with larger polar warming, favors substantial atmospheric radiative cooling that balances increases in latent heat release from precipitation. Changes in the dry-static energy flux divergence contribute modestly to the polar-amplified pattern. Additional contributions to the polar-amplified response come, in the Arctic, from the cloud feedback and, in the Antarctic, from both the cloud and water vapor feedbacks. The primary contributor to the intermodel spread in the relative precipitation change in the polar region is also the Planck feedback, with the lapse rate feedback and dry-static energy flux divergence changes playing secondary roles. For all regions, there are strong covariances between radiative feedbacks and changes in the dry-static energy flux divergence that impact the intermodel spread. These results imply that constraining regional precipitation change, particularly in the polar regions, will require constraining not only individual feedbacks but also the covariances between radiative feedbacks and atmospheric energy transport. 

Abstract The midlatitude poleward atmospheric energy transport increases in radiatively forced simulations of warmed climates across a range of models from comprehensive coupled general circulation models (GCMs) to idealized aquaplanet moist GCMs to diffusive moist energy balance models. These increases have been rationalized from two perspectives. The energetic (or radiative) perspective takes the atmospheric energy budget and decomposes energy flux changes (radiative forcing, feedbacks, or surface fluxes) to determine the energy transport changes required by the budget. The diffusive perspective takes the net effect of atmospheric macroturbulence to be a diffusive energy transport down-gradient, so transport changes can arise from changes in mean energy gradients or turbulent diffusivity. Here, we compare these perspectives in idealized moist, gray-radiation GCM simulations over a wide range of climates. The energetic perspective has a dominant role for radiative forcing in this GCM, with cancellation between the temperature feedback components that account for the GCM’s nonmonotonic energy transport changes in response to warming. Comprehensive CMIP5 simulations have similarities in the Northern Hemisphere to the idealized GCM, although a comprehensive GCM over several CO 2 doublings has a distinctly different feedback evolution structure. The diffusive perspective requires a non-constant diffusivity to account for the idealized GCM-simulated changes, with important roles for the eddy velocity, dry static stability, and horizontal energy gradients. Beyond diagnostic analysis, GCM-independent a priori theories for components of the temperature feedback are presented that account for changes without knowledge of a perturbed climate state, suggesting that the energetic perspective is the more parsimonious one. 

Abstract A fundamental divide exists between previous studies that conclude that polar amplification does not occur without sea ice and studies that find that polar amplification is an inherent feature of the atmosphere independent of sea ice. We hypothesize that a representation of climatological ocean heat transport is key for simulating polar amplification in ice-free climates. To investigate this, we run a suite of targeted experiments in the slab ocean aquaplanet configuration of CESM2-CAM6 with different profiles of prescribed ocean heat transport, which are invariant under CO₂quadrupling. In simulations without climatological ocean heat transport, polar amplification does not occur. In contrast, in simulations with climatological ocean heat transport, robust polar amplification occurs in all seasons. What is causing this dependence of polar amplification on ocean heat transport? Energy-balance model theory is incapable of explaining our results and in fact would predict that introducing ocean heat transport leads to less polar amplification. We instead demonstrate that shortwave cloud radiative feedbacks can explain the divergent polar climate responses simulated by CESM2-CAM6. Targeted cloud locking experiments in the zero ocean heat transport simulations are able to reproduce the polar amplification of the climatological ocean heat transport simulations, solely by prescribing high-latitude cloud radiative feedbacks. We conclude that polar amplification in ice-free climates is underpinned by ocean–atmosphere coupling, through a less negative high latitude shortwave cloud radiative feedback that facilitates enhanced polar warming. In addition to reconciling previous disparities, these results have important implications for interpreting past equable climates and climate projections under high-emissions scenarios. Significance StatementPolar amplification is a robust feature of climate change in the modern-day climate. However, previous climate modeling studies fundamentally do not agree on whether polar amplification occurs in ice-free climates. In this study, we find in a state-of-the-art climate model that, if ocean heat transport is neglected, the response to an increase in CO₂is not polar amplified, whereas robust polar amplification occurs if ocean heat transport is included. Using targeted model experiments, we diagnose cloud radiative effects as the driver of this divergent behavior. We conclude that polar amplification is a robust feature of the atmosphere–ocean system. Our results have important implications for interpreting past warm climates and future projections under high-emissions scenarios. 

Abstract Do changes in ocean heat transport (OHT) that occur with CO 2 forcing, impact climate sensitivity in Earth system models? Changes in OHT with warming are ubiquitous in model experiments: when forced with CO 2 , such models exhibit declining poleward OHT in both hemispheres at most latitudes, which can persist over multicentennial time scales. To understand how changes in OHT may impact how the climate system responds to CO 2 forcing, particularly climate sensitivity, we perform a series of Earth system model experiments in which we systematically perturb OHT (in a slab ocean, relative to its preindustrial control climatology) while simultaneously doubling atmospheric CO 2 . We find that equilibrium climate sensitivity varies substantially with OHT. Specifically, there is a 0.6 K decrease in global mean surface warming for every 10% decline in poleward OHT. Radiative feedbacks from CO 2 doubling, and the warming attributable to each of them, generally become more positive (or less negative) when poleward OHT increases. Water vapor feedback differences account for approximately half the spread in climate sensitivity between experiments, while differences in the lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks account for the rest. Prescribed changes in OHT instigate opposing changes in atmospheric energy transport and the general circulation, which explain differences in atmospheric water vapor and lapse rate between experiments. Our results show that changes in OHT modify atmospheric radiative feedbacks at all latitudes, thereby driving changes in equilibrium climate sensitivity. More broadly, they demonstrate that radiative feedbacks are not independent of the coupled (atmosphere and ocean) dynamic responses that accompany greenhouse gas forcing.