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Influence of internal variability on Arctic sea-ice trends

A Correction to this article was published on 21 May 2015

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Internal climate variability can mask or enhance human-induced sea-ice loss on timescales ranging from years to decades. It must be properly accounted for when considering observations, understanding projections and evaluating models.

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Figure 1: Arctic September sea-ice extent anomalies.
Figure 2: Arctic September sea-ice extent trends.
Figure 3: Probability of a pause in September Arctic sea-ice extent.
Figure 4: Cascade of uncertainty in CMIP5.

Change history

  • 16 April 2015

    In the Commentary ‘Influence of internal variability on Arctic sea-ice trends' (Nature Clim. Change 5, 86–89; 2015), in Fig. 3c, the x-axis label for pause length of 20 years was incorrectly repeated. Corrected after print 16 April 2015.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Nathan Gillett and Greg Flato for comments. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available the model output, listed in Supplementary Table 1.

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Correspondence to Neil C. Swart.

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Swart, N., Fyfe, J., Hawkins, E. et al. Influence of internal variability on Arctic sea-ice trends. Nature Clim Change 5, 86–89 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2483

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