Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 13, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28283-y
Keywords
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Categories
Funding
- EU H2020 APPLICATE project [GA727862]
- Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme - BEIS
- Defra
- UK-China Research and Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China as part of the Newton Fund
- NERC [NE/P006760/1, NE/R005125/1, NE/V005855/1]
- US Department of Energy [DE-SC0019407]
- Research council of Norway INES project [270061]
- Norwegian e-infrastructure for Research and Education (UNINETT Sigma2) [NN2345K, NS2345K, NS9034K]
- German Federal Ministry of Education and Research [FKZ: 01LP2002A]
- European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme through the Blue-Action Project [GA727852]
- National Center for Atmospheric Research
- US National Science Foundation [1852977]
- MEXT through the Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models [JPMXD0717935457]
- ArCS II [JPMXD1420318865]
- Environment Research and Technology Development Fund [JPMEERF20192004]
- Spanish Ramon y Cajal' programme [RYC-2016-21181, RYC-2016-22772]
- Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [XDA19070404]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [42030602, 91837101]
- EU H2020 Blue-Action [GA727852]
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) [274762653]
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0019407] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
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The extent to which Arctic sea ice decline affects mid-latitude atmospheric circulation is still debated. This study uses a multi-model experiment to show that Arctic sea ice loss weakens mid-latitude westerly winds, but the overall effect is small. The relationship between Arctic sea ice and atmospheric circulation has weakened in recent observations and is no longer inconsistent with models.
The degree to which Arctic sea ice decline influences the mid-latitude atmospheric circulation is widely debated. Here, the authors use a coordinated multi-model experiment to show that Arctic sea ice loss causes a weakening of the mid-latitude westerly winds, but the effect is overall small. The possibility that Arctic sea ice loss weakens mid-latitude westerlies, promoting more severe cold winters, has sparked more than a decade of scientific debate, with apparent support from observations but inconclusive modelling evidence. Here we show that sixteen models contributing to the Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project simulate a weakening of mid-latitude westerlies in response to projected Arctic sea ice loss. We develop an emergent constraint based on eddy feedback, which is 1.2 to 3 times too weak in the models, suggesting that the real-world weakening lies towards the higher end of the model simulations. Still, the modelled response to Arctic sea ice loss is weak: the North Atlantic Oscillation response is similar in magnitude and offsets the projected response to increased greenhouse gases, but would only account for around 10% of variations in individual years. We further find that relationships between Arctic sea ice and atmospheric circulation have weakened recently in observations and are no longer inconsistent with those in models.
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