As the impacts of climate change are felt around the world, no area is experiencing more drastic changes than the northern polar region. Studies have shown the Arctic is warming at two to three times as fast as the rest of the planet, resulting in a rapid loss of its sea ice volume.
That sea ice loss, declining at an average rate of about 13 percent per decade, is having a long-lasting climatic impact in the Arctic and beyond, according to a new study published this month in Nature Communications.
The research team, led by University at Albany atmospheric scientist Aiguo Dai, analyzed observational data and climate model simulations to show how fluctuations in Arctic sea ice cover are able to amplify multi-decadal variations in surface temperatures not only in the Arctic, but also in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Their results indicate that recent—and future—decreases in sea ice cover have a significant influence on global climate.
“Through our study, we demonstrated for the first time that fluctuations in sea ice-air interactions can greatly enlarge or amplify multi-decadal climate variations not only in the Arctic, but also the North Atlantic,” said Dai, a distinguished professor at UAlbany’s Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences.
“As the melting of Arctic sea ice continues, its impacts are likely to be felt even more in coming decades, not only in the Arctic but over the North Atlantic and other regions across the globe,” said Dai. “This is because sea surface temperature anomalies in the North Atlantic can affect atmospheric circulation patterns over Europe, North America, West Africa and South America, leading to temperature and precipitation changes in these regions.”
Sea ice-air interactions
The researchers used publicly available observational data, coupled with two novel climate model simulations carried out through a computer hosted at the UAlbany Data Center. In one simulation, Arctic sea ice cover was allowed to fluctuate freely based on changing climatic conditions, while the other parallel simulation was run without year-to-year sea-ice fluctuations.
When sea ice cover was fixed, multidecadal climate variations were reduced, both in the Arctic and North Atlantic, by 20 to 50 percent. This suggests that sea ice-air interactions play a crucial role in regulating climate variations.
The researchers ran additional simulations using rising carbon dioxide levels by 1 percent per year to further confirm their results. They are currently examin