Reduced probability of ice-free summers for 1.5 °C compared to 2 °C warming

Alexandra Jahn ()
Additional contact information
Alexandra Jahn: University of Colorado at Boulder

Nature Climate Change, 2018, vol. 8, issue 5, 409-413

Abstract: Abstract Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly with increasing global temperatures. However, it is largely unknown how Arctic summer sea-ice impacts would vary under the 1.5 °C Paris target compared to scenarios with greater warming. Using the Community Earth System Model, I show that constraining warming to 1.5 °C rather than 2.0 °C reduces the probability of any summer ice-free conditions by 2100 from 100% to 30%. It also reduces the late-century probability of an ice cover below the 2012 record minimum from 98% to 55%. For warming above 2 °C, frequent ice-free conditions can be expected, potentially for several months per year. Although sea-ice loss is generally reversible for decreasing temperatures, sea ice will only recover to current conditions if atmospheric CO2 is reduced below present-day concentrations. Due to model biases, these results provide a lower bound on summer sea-ice impacts, but clearly demonstrate the benefits of constraining warming to 1.5 °C.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0127-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:8:y:2018:i:5:d:10.1038_s41558-018-0127-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0127-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().