Polar amplification dominated by local forcing and feedbacks

Malte F. Stuecker (), Cecilia M. Bitz, Kyle C. Armour, Cristian Proistosescu, Sarah M. Kang, Shang-Ping Xie, Doyeon Kim, Shayne McGregor, Wenjun Zhang, Sen Zhao, Wenju Cai, Yue Dong and Fei-Fei Jin
Additional contact information
Malte F. Stuecker: Institute for Basic Science
Cecilia M. Bitz: University of Washington
Kyle C. Armour: University of Washington
Cristian Proistosescu: University of Washington
Sarah M. Kang: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
Shang-Ping Xie: University of California San Diego
Doyeon Kim: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
Shayne McGregor: Monash University
Wenjun Zhang: Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
Sen Zhao: Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
Wenju Cai: Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography/Institute for Advanced Ocean Studies, Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology
Yue Dong: University of Washington
Fei-Fei Jin: University of Hawaii at Manoa

Nature Climate Change, 2018, vol. 8, issue 12, 1076-1081

Abstract: Abstract The surface temperature response to greenhouse gas forcing displays a characteristic pattern of polar-amplified warming1–5, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. However, the causes of this polar amplification are still debated. Some studies highlight the importance of surface-albedo feedback6–8, while others find larger contributions from longwave feedbacks4,9,10, with changes in atmospheric and oceanic heat transport also thought to play a role11–16. Here, we determine the causes of polar amplification using climate model simulations in which CO2 forcing is prescribed in distinct geographical regions, with the linear sum of climate responses to regional forcings replicating the response to global forcing. The degree of polar amplification depends strongly on the location of CO2 forcing. In particular, polar amplification is found to be dominated by forcing in the polar regions, specifically through positive local lapse-rate feedback, with ice-albedo and Planck feedbacks playing subsidiary roles. Extra-polar forcing is further shown to be conducive to polar warming, but given that it induces a largely uniform warming pattern through enhanced poleward heat transport, it contributes little to polar amplification. Therefore, understanding polar amplification requires primarily a better insight into local forcing and feedbacks rather than extra-polar processes.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0339-y 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:12:d:10.1038_s41558-018-0339-y

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0339-y

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 ().