The Causes of Arctic Amplification and its Impact on Mid-latitudes

Suny At Albany, Albany NY

Investigators

Abstract

With increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs), the Arctic has been warming much faster than the rest of the world – a phenomenon known as the Arctic Amplification (AA). This enhanced warming accelerates sea-ice loss and alters the North-South temperature distribution, affecting the mid-latitude weather and climate. Many competing mechanisms have been suggested to explain AA, and findings about the impacts of AA are inconclusive. This research aims to better understand how the Arctic sea-ice loss affects warming and contributes to AA, and how AA affects the mid-latitude weather and climate under increasing GHGs. The principal investigators (PIs) will conduct observational and model analyses, and perform targeted model experiments to address this goal. To quantify the role of sea-ice loss in producing AA and affecting mid-latitude weather and climate, the PIs will perform novel ocean-atmosphere coupled model experiments using the NCAR Community Earth System Model (CESM1). These experiments will help separate the impacts due the enhanced Arctic warming with AA and the associated sea-ice loss from those due to the background warming caused by GHGs. The questions to be answered are: (1) What is the role of sea-ice loss in producing AA?, (2) What causes sea-ice to melt? (3) How does AA affect high-latitude climate?, and (4) Whether and how does AA affect mid-latitude weather and climate? The PIs will first analyze the monthly fields to quantify the mean climate responses to increasing GHGs with and without sea-ice loss (and the associated AA). They will further analyze daily data to quantify changes in transient weather patterns, such as atmospheric blocking, winter temperature and circulation anomaly patterns, storm and wave activities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.