Response of a General Circulation Model of the Atmosphere to Removal of the Arctic Ice-cap

Abstract

OVER the past few years, numerical models have been developed for investigating the general circulation of the atmosphere and studying its long term behaviour. (See, for example, Smargorinsky et al.¹ Kasahara and Washington².) These models are firmly based on the equations of fluid motion and thermodynamics and simulate in mathematical terms the chief physical processes which are thought to be of importance in determining large scale atmospheric motions over long periods of time (a month or more). The advent of very high speed computers has made numerical experiments with these models reasonably easy.