Journal
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 43, Issue 17, Pages 9113-9120Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2016GL070067
Keywords
Arctic; sea ice; predictability
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Science (BER) of the U.S. Department of Energy
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Climate model simulations give a large range of over 100years for predictions of when the Arctic could first become ice free in the summer, and many studies have attempted to narrow this uncertainty range. However, given the chaotic nature of the climate system, what amount of spread in the prediction of an ice-free summer Arctic is inevitable? Based on results from large ensemble simulations with the Community Earth System Model, we show that internal variability alone leads to a prediction uncertainty of about two decades, while scenario uncertainty between the strong (Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5) and medium (RCP4.5) forcing scenarios adds at least another 5years. Common metrics of the past and present mean sea ice state (such as ice extent, volume, and thickness) as well as global mean temperatures do not allow a reduction of the prediction uncertainty from internal variability.
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