Antarctic ice sheet - climate feedbacks under high future carbon emissions
Shaina Rogstad, Alan Condron, Robert DeConto, David Pollard
备注：
30 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Science Advances August 2019. This version is the original submission and does not reflect edits based on reviews. This work was also partially presented at AGU Fall Meeting in 2017 and 2018, AMS AOFD 2019, GCC 2019, AMS Annual 2020, AAG 2020
Freshwater forcing from a retreating Antarctic Ice Sheet could have a wide range of impacts on future global climate. Here, we report on multi-century (present-2250) climate simulations performed using a fully coupled numerical model integrated under future greenhouse gas emissions scenarios IPCC RCP4.5 and 8.5, with meltwater discharge provided by a dynamic-thermodynamic ice sheet model. Accounting for Antarctica's meltwater contribution raises sub-surface ocean temperatures by 1 C at the ice margin, beyond rates currently projected. In contrast, 2-10 C cooler surface air and ocean temperatures in the Southern Ocean cause sea ice to expand and delay the increase of projected global mean anthropogenic warming. In addition, the projected loss of Arctic winter sea ice and weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation are delayed be several decades. Our results demonstrate a clear need to more accurately account for meltwater input from ice sheets if we are to make confident climate predictions.
Fine-Scale Heterogeneity of Snow Cover in the Antarctic Marginal Ice Zone
The University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学）；Swinburne University of Technology（斯威本科技大学）；University of Tasmania（塔斯马尼亚大学）；University of Cape Town（开普敦大学）；British Antarctic Survey（英国南极调查局）；Bureau of Meteorology（气象局）
Microwave emissivity models of sea ice are poorly validated empirically. Typical validation studies involve using averaged or stereotyped profiles of ice parameters against averaged radiance measurements. Measurement sites are rarely matched and even less often point-by-point. Because of saline content, complex permittivity of sea ice is highly variable and difficult to predict. Therefore, to check the validity of a typical, plane-parallel, radiative-transfer-based ice emissivity model, we apply it to fresh water ice instead of salt-water ice. Radiance simulations for lake ice are compared wit…
It has been proposed that galactic cosmic rays may influence the Earth's climate by affecting cloud formation. If changes in cloudiness play a part in climate change, their effect changes sign in Antarctica. Satellite data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) are here used to calculate the changes in surface temperatures at all latitudes, due to small percentage changes in cloudiness. The results match the observed contrasts in temperature changes, globally and in Antarctica. Evidently clouds do not just respond passively to climate changes but take an active part in the forcing, …
1) The annual cycle of atmospheric methane in southern high latitudes is extremely highly correlated with Antarctic sea ice extent. 2) The annual cycle of atmospheric methane in the Arctic is highly correlated with Antarctic or Arctic plus Antarctic sea ice extent. 3) We propose the global annual cycle of atmospheric methane is largely driven by Antarctic sea ice dynamics, with relatively stronger influence from other fluxes (probably the biota) in the Northern Hemisphere. 4) We propose degassing during sea ice freeze and temperature dependent solubility in the ocean dominate the annual methan…
Mechanisms such as ice-shelf hydrofracturing and ice-cliff collapse may rapidly increase discharge from marine-based ice sheets. Here, we link a probabilistic framework for sea-level projections to a small ensemble of Antarctic ice-sheet (AIS) simulations incorporating these physical processes to explore their influence on global-mean sea-level (GMSL) and relative sea-level (RSL). We compare the new projections to past results using expert assessment and structured expert elicitation about AIS changes. Under high greenhouse gas emissions (Representative Concentration Pathway [RCP] 8.5), median…
High temporal resolution in--situ measurements of pancake ice drift are presented, from a pair of buoys deployed on floes in the Antarctic marginal ice zone during the winter sea ice expansion, over nine days in which the region was impacted by four polar cyclones. Concomitant measurements of wave-in-ice activity from the buoys is used to infer that pancake ice conditions were maintained over at least the first seven days. Analysis of the data shows: (i)~unprecedentedly fast drift speeds in the Southern Ocean; (ii)~high correlation of drift velocities with the surface wind velocities, indicati…
Observations indicate that the Arctic sea ice cover is rapidly retreating while the Antarctic sea ice cover is steadily expanding. State-of-the-art climate models, by contrast, typically simulate a moderate decrease in both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice covers. However, in each hemisphere there is a small subset of model simulations that have sea ice trends similar to the observations. Based on this, a number of recent studies have suggested that the models are consistent with the observations in each hemisphere when simulated internal climate variability is taken into account. Here we exam…
Multiscale Decomposition Reveals Predictable Interannual Variability and Climate Trends in Antarctic Sea Ice Loss
The Alan Turing Institute（艾伦·图灵研究所）；Department of Cyrospheric and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Innsbruck（因斯布鲁克大学冰冻圈与大气科学系）；British Antarctic Survey（英国南极调查局）；Autodesk Research（欧特克研究院）
The Antarctic winter atmosphere minimal temperature and pressure series reveal that $CO_2$ phase shift (deposition) is possible in some extreme cases, even leading to possible $CO_2$ snow phenomenon at Vostok Antarctic station and in other near South Pole regions. A hypothesis has been formulated that stable $CO_2$ snow cover might have formed in Earth past which may influence interpretation of glacial chronology records. This effect may also manifest in other minor gases. Its global climate role is discussed.
The response of the Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) to changing climate forcings is an important driver of sea-level changes. Anthropogenic climate change may drive a sizeable AIS tipping point response with subsequent increases in coastal flooding risks. Many studies analyzing flood risks use simple models to project the future responses of AIS and its sea-level contributions. These analyses have provided important new insights, but they are often silent on the effects of potentially important processes such as Marine Ice Sheet Instability (MISI) or Marine Ice Cliff Instability (MICI). These approx…
Controls on the ocean response to idealized Antarctic meltwater input
Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science, New York University（纽约大学柯朗数学科学研究所）；Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校斯克里普斯海洋学研究所）
Interannual variability in the Southern Ocean is investigated via nonlinear Laplacian spectral analysis (NLSA), an objective eigendecomposition technique for nonlinear dynamical systems that can simultaneously recover multiple timescales from data with high skill. Applied to modeled and observed sea surface temperature and sea ice concentration data, NLSA recovers the wavenumber-2 eastward propagating signal corresponding to the Antarctic circumpolar wave (ACW). During certain phases of its lifecycle, the spatial patterns of this mode display a structure that can explain the statistical origin…
Current global warming is causing significant changes in snowfall in polar regions, directly impacting the mass balance of the ice caps. The only water supply in Antarctica, precipitation, is poorly estimated from surface measurements. The onboard cloud-profiling radar of the CloudSat satellite provided the first real opportunity to estimate precipitation at continental scale. Based on CloudSat observations, we propose to explore the vertical structure of precipitation in Antarctica over the 2007-2010 period. A first division of this dataset following a topographical approach (continent versus…
The Climate Change Institute W. M. Keck Laser Ice Facility laser ablation inductively coupled plasma spectrometer (LA-ICP-MS) yields a sample every 121 micrometers, a resolution on the scale of ice crystal triple junctions and grain boundaries in ice cores. Recent publications suggest that these features can allow amplification of impurity concentrations, and allow migration through veins potentially obscuring climate signals preserved in polar ice. LA-ICP-MS data reveal that such features modify these signals by less than 6% in the case of Na, Ca, and Fe based on the examination of GISP2 ice …
Our recently developed tool, called Directed Affinity Segmentation was originally designed for data-driven discovery of coherent sets in fluidic systems. Here we interpret that it can also be used to indicate early warning signs of critical transitions in ice shelves as seen from remote sensing data. We apply a directed spectral clustering methodology, including an asymmetric affinity matrix and the associated directed graph Laplacian, to reprocess the ice velocity data and remote sensing satellite images of the Larsen C ice shelf. Our tool has enabled the simulated prediction of historical ev…
A set of idealized experiments are performed to analyze the competing effects of declining atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the opening of an ocean gateway, and varying orbital parameters. These forcing mechanisms, which influence the global mean climate state, may have played a role for triggering climate transitions of the past (for example during the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition and the build-up of the Antarctic Ice Sheet). Sensitivity simulations with a coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model are conducted to test these three forcings and their roles for the global climate…
Modeling and understanding sea ice dynamics in marginal ice zones relies on acquiring Lagrangian ice floe measurements. However, optical satellite images are susceptible to atmospheric noise, leading to gaps in the retrieved time series of floe positions. This paper presents an efficient and statistically accurate nonlinear dynamical interpolation framework for recovering missing floe observations. It exploits a balanced physics-based and data-driven construction to address the challenges posed by the high-dimensional and nonlinear nature of the coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean system, where effec…
This paper investigates the initial boundary value problem for a non-stationary one-dimensional heat equation that simulates the temperature distribution in freshwater ice near the Earth's poles. The mathematical model has been constructed taking into account solid-liquid phase transitions. Data from meteorological stations were used to determine the model parameters, with the help of which the necessary physical and thermophysical characteristics of the computational domain were obtained. For the numerical solution of the problem, the finite volume method (FVM) was used. For the obtained peri…
Ice cores are known to be rich in information regarding past climates, and the possibility that they record astronomical phenomena has also been discussed. Rood et al. were the first to suggest, in 1979, that nitrate ion (NO3-) concentration spikes observed in the depth profile of a South Pole ice core might correlate with the known historical supernovae (SNe), Tycho (AD 1572), Kepler (AD 1604), and SN 1181 (AD 1181). Their findings, however, were not supported by subsequent examinations by different groups using different ice cores, and the results have remained controversial and confusing. H…
Stochastic coupling of climate variables and ice volume over the Late Pleistocene glacial cycles
Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University（诺尔迪塔，瑞典皇家理工学院和斯德哥尔摩大学）；Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院数学系）；Departments of Mathematics, Earth & Planetary Sciences, and Physics, Yale University（耶鲁大学数学、地球与行星科学及物理系）
We use numerical climate simulations, paleoclimate data, and modern observations to study the effect of growing ice melt from Antarctica and Greenland. Meltwater tends to stabilize the ocean column, inducing amplifying feedbacks that increase subsurface ocean warming and ice shelf melting. Cold meltwater and induced dynamical effects cause ocean surface cooling in the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic, thus increasing Earth's energy imbalance and heat flux into most of the global ocean's surface. Southern Ocean surface cooling, while lower latitudes are warming, increases precipitation on the …
The climate impact of ocean gateway openings during the Eocene-Oligocene transition is still under debate. Previous model studies employed grid resolutions at which the impact of mesoscale eddies has to be parameterized. We present results of a state-of-the-art eddy-resolving global ocean model with a closed Drake Passage, and compare with results of the same model at non-eddying resolution. An analysis of the pathways of heat by decomposing the meridional heat transport into eddy, horizontal, and overturning circulation components indicates that the model behavior on the large scale is qualit…
Several environmental tipping points and self-reinforcing feedback loops are still disregarded within the frequently used climate models. Thus, existing climate models are not very representative for providing projections of the conditions after the actual environmental tipping points are triggered. In this contribution, we discuss the presence of the Arctic sea-ice loss tipping point and its influence on global warming. Our literature search and PIOMAS sea volume observation data based projection indicate the significant acceleration of the sea-ice loss (which leads to a year around and perma…
Here we evaluate the sea ice, surface air temperature, and sea-level-pressure from 31 of the models used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) for their biases, trends, and variability, and compare them to the CMIP5 ensemble and the ERA5 reanalysis for the period 1979 to 2004. The principal purpose of this assessment is to provide an overview of the ability of the CMIP6 ensemble to represent the Arctic climate, and to see how this has changed since the last Phase of CMIP. Overall, we find a distinct improvement in the representation of the sea ice volume, but also in the…
The extent to which the ongoing decline in Arctic sea ice affects mid-latitude climate has received great attention and polarised opinions. The basic issue is whether the inter-annual variability in Arctic sea ice is the cause of, or the response to, variability in mid-latitude atmospheric circulation. A recent paper by Mori et al. (M19) claims to have reconciled previous conflicting studies by showing that a consistent mid-latitude climate response to inter-annual sea-ice anomalies can be identified in both the ERA-Interim reanalysis, taken as observations, and in an ensemble of atmosphere-on…
M. Budyko and W. Sellers independently introduced seminal energy balance climate models in 1969, each with a goal of investigating the role played by positive ice albedo feedback in climate dynamics. In this paper we replace the relaxation to the mean horizontal heat transport mechanism used in the models of Budyko and Sellers with diffusive heat transport. We couple the resulting surface temperature equation with an equation for movement of the edge of the ice sheet (called the ice line), recently introduced by E. Widiasih. We apply the spectral method to the temperature-ice line system and c…
Cenozoic temperature, sea level and CO2 co-variations provide insights into climate sensitivity to external forcings and sea level sensitivity to climate change. Climate sensitivity depends on the initial climate state, but potentially can be accurately inferred from precise paleoclimate data. Pleistocene climate oscillations yield a fast-feedback climate sensitivity 3 +/- 1°C for 4 W/m2 CO2 forcing if Holocene warming relative to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) is used as calibration, but the error (uncertainty) is substantial and partly subjective because of poorly defined LGM global temperat…
This chapter is dedicated to the slow dynamics of the climate system, at time scales of one~thousand to one million years. We focus specifically on the phenomenon of ice ages that has characterised the slow evolution of climate over the Quaternary. Ice ages are a form of variability featuring interactions between different large-scale components and processes in the climate system, including ice sheet, deep-ocean and carbon cycle dynamics. This variability is also at least partly controlled by changes in the seasonal and latitudinal incoming solar radiation associated with the combined effects…
Understanding how sea ice melts is critical to climate projections. In the Arctic, melt ponds that develop on the surface of sea ice floes during the late spring and summer largely determine their albedo -- a key parameter in climate modeling. Here we explore the possibility of a conceptual sea ice climate model passing through a bifurcation point -- an irreversible critical threshold as the system warms, by incorporating geometric information about melt pond evolution. This study is based on a bifurcation analysis of the energy balance climate model with ice - albedo feedback as the key mecha…
Various climate states at high obliquity are realized for a range of stellar irradiance using a dynamical atmosphere-ocean-sea ice climate model in an Aquaplanet configuration. Three stable climate states are obtained that differ in the extent of the sea ice cover. For low values of irradiance the model simulates a Cryoplanet that has a perennial global sea ice cover. By increasing stellar irradiance, transitions occur to an Uncapped Cryoplanet with a perennial equatorial sea ice belt, and eventually to an Aquaplanet with no ice. Using an emulator model we find that the Uncapped Cryoplanet is …
In this paper we analyse a dynamical system based on the so-called KCG (Källén, Crafoord, Ghil) conceptual climate model. This model describes an evolution of the globally averaged temperature and the average extent of the ice sheets. In the nondimensional form the model is prone to several simplifications facilitating the subsequent analysis. We consider the limiting case of the stationary snow line for which the phase plane can be completely analysed and the type of each stationary point can be determined. One of them can exhibit the Hopf bifurcation for which occurrence we find the sufficie…
We analyze the stability of a low-order coupled sea ice and climate model and extract the essential physics governing the time scales of response as a function of greenhouse gas forcing. Under present climate conditions the stability is controlled by longwave radiation driven heat conduction. However, as greenhouse gas forcing increases and the ice cover decays, the destabilizing influence of ice-albedo feedback acts on equal footing with longwave stabilization. Both are seasonally out of phase and as the system warms towards a seasonal ice state these effects, which underlie the bifurcations …
There is widespread agreement that ice sheets flowed into the ocean in tropical latitudes at sea level during the Earth's past. Whether these extreme ice ages were snowball Earth events, with the entire surface covered in ice, or whether ocean water remained ice free in regions about the equator, continues to be controversial. For the latter situation to occur, the effect of positive ice albedo feedback would have to be damped to stabilize an advancing ice sheet shy of the equator. In this paper we analyze a conceptual model comprised of a zonally averaged surface temperature equation coupled …
The fluctuation statistics of the observed sea ice extent during the satellite era are compared with model output from CMIP5 models using a multi-fractal time series method. The two robust features of the observations are that on annual to bi-annual time scales the ice extent exhibits white noise structure and there is a decadal scale trend associated with the decay of the ice cover. It is shown that (i) there is a large inter-model variability in the time scales extracted from the models, (ii) none of the models exhibit the decadal time scales found in the satellite observations, (iii) {5} of…
IceCloudNet: Cirrus and mixed-phase cloud prediction from SEVIRI input learned from sparse supervision
ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；European Space Agency (ESA)（欧洲空间局）；Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Scienze Marine (CNR-ISMAR)（意大利国家研究委员会-海洋科学研究所）
The climate of Earth is susceptible to catastrophes that could threaten the longevity of human civilization. Geoengineering to reduce incoming solar radiation has been suggested as a way to mediate the warming effects of contemporary climate change, but a geoengineering program for thousands of years could also be used to enlarge the size of the polar ice caps and create a permanently cooler climate. Such a large ice cap state would make Earth less susceptible to climate threats and could allow human civilization to survive further into the future than otherwise possible. Intentionally extendi…
We propose a conceptual model which generates abrupt climate changes akin to Dansgaard-Oeschger events. In the model these abrupt climate changes are not triggered by external perturbations but rather emerge in a dynamic self-consistent model through complex interactions of the ocean, the atmosphere and an intermittent process. The abrupt climate changes are caused in our model by intermittencies in the sea-ice cover. The ocean is represented by a Stommel two-box model, the atmosphere by a Lorenz-84 model and the sea-ice cover by a deterministic approximation of correlated additive and multipl…
Evidence of past climate variations are stored in ice and indicate glacial-interglacial cycles characterized by three dominant time periods of 20kyr, 40kyr, and 100kyr. We study the scaling properties of temperature proxy records of four ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. These series are long-range correlated in the time scales of 1-100kyr. We show that these series are nonlinear as expressed by volatility correlations and a broad multifractal spectrum. We present a stochastic model that captures the scaling and the nonlinear properties observed in the data.
Climate and ocean circulation changes toward a modern snowball Earth
Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology（日本海洋地球科学技术局）；Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Institute of Future Science, Institute of Science Tokyo（东京科学大学未来科学研究所生命起源研究所）；Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo（东京大学大气海洋研究所）；University of the Ryukyus（冲绳大学）；Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University（东北大学理学研究科地球物理学科）；National Institute of Polar Research（国立极地研究所）；The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI（综合研究大学院大学）
It is often known, from modelling studies, that a certain mode of climate tipping (of the oceanic thermohaline circulation, for example) is governed by an underlying fold bifurcation. For such a case we present a scheme of analysis that determines the best stochastic fit to the existing data. This provides the evolution rate of the effective control parameter, the variation of the stability coefficient, the path itself and its tipping point. By assessing the actual effective level of noise in the available time series, we are then able to make probability estimates of the time of tipping. This…
Wave attenuation by ice floes is an important parameter for modelling the Arctic Oceans. At present, attenuation coefficients are extracted from linear models as a function of the incident wave period and floe thickness. Recent explorations in the Antarctic Mixed Ice Zone (MIZ) revealed a further dependence on wave amplitude, suggesting that nonlinear contributions are non-negligible. An experimental model for wave attenuation by a single ice floe in a wave flume is here presented. Observations are compared with linear predictions based on wave scattering. Results indicate that linear models p…
Radiative effects of water ice clouds have noteworthy consequences on the Martian atmosphere, its thermal structure and circulation. Accordingly, the inclusion of such effects in the LMD Mars Global Climate Model (GCM) greatly modifies the simulated Martian water cycle. The intent of this paper is to address the impact of radiatively active clouds on atmospheric water vapor and ice in the GCM and improve its representation. We propose a new enhanced modeling of the water cycle, consisting of detailed cloud microphysics with dynamic condensation nuclei and a better implementation of perennial s…
Mila - Quebec AI Institute（Mila-魁北克人工智能研究所）；Université de Montréal（蒙特利尔大学）
Though machine learning has achieved notable success in modeling sequential and spatial data for speech recognition and in computer vision, applications to remote sensing and climate science problems are seldom considered. In this paper, we demonstrate techniques from unsupervised learning of future video frame prediction, to increase the accuracy of ice flow tracking in multi-spectral satellite images. As the volume of cryosphere data increases in coming years, this is an interesting and important opportunity for machine learning to address a global challenge for climate change, risk manageme…
