Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Arctic amplification dominated by temperature feedbacks in contemporary climate models

Nature Geoscience volume 7, pages 181–184 (2014)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Climate change is amplified in the Arctic region. Arctic amplification has been found in past warm1 and glacial2 periods, as well as in historical observations3,4 and climate model experiments5,6. Feedback effects associated with temperature, water vapour and clouds have been suggested to contribute to amplified warming in the Arctic, but the surface albedo feedback—the increase in surface absorption of solar radiation when snow and ice retreat—is often cited as the main contributor7,8,9,10. However, Arctic amplification is also found in models without changes in snow and ice cover11,12. Here we analyse climate model simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 archive to quantify the contributions of the various feedbacks. We find that in the simulations, the largest contribution to Arctic amplification comes from a temperature feedbacks: as the surface warms, more energy is radiated back to space in low latitudes, compared with the Arctic. This effect can be attributed to both the different vertical structure of the warming in high and low latitudes, and a smaller increase in emitted blackbody radiation per unit warming at colder temperatures. We find that the surface albedo feedback is the second main contributor to Arctic amplification and that other contributions are substantially smaller or even opposeArctic amplification.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Arctic amplification in CMIP5 models.
Figure 2: Warming contributions of individual feedback mechanisms.
Figure 3: Intermodel spread of Arctic warming contributions of feedbacks versus total Arctic warming in individual models.

References

  1. Barron, E. J. A warm, equable cretaceous: The nature of the problem. Earth-Sci. Rev. 19, 305–338 (1983).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Dahl-Jensen, D. et al. Past temperatures directly from the greenland ice sheet. Science 282, 268–271 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Chapman, W. L. & Walsh, J. E. Recent variations of sea ice and air temperature in high latitudes. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 74, 33–47 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bekryaev, R. V., Polyakov, I. V. & Alexeev, V. A. Role of polar amplification in long-term surface air temperature variations and modern arctic warming. J. Clim. 23, 3888–3906 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Manabe, S. & Wetherald, R. The effects of doubling the CO2 concentration on the climate of a general circulation model. J. Atmos. Sci. 32, 3–15 (1975).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Holland, M. & Bitz, C. Polar amplification of climate change in coupled models. Clim. Dynam. 21, 221–232 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Serreze, M. C. & Francis, J. A. The arctic amplification debate. Climatic Change 76, 241–264 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Screen, J. A. & Simmonds, I. The central role of diminishing sea ice in recent arctic temperature amplification. Nature 464, 1334–1337 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Crook, J. A., Forster, P. M. & Stuber, N. Spatial patterns of modeled climate feedback and contributions to temperature response and polar amplification. J. Clim. 24, 3575–3592 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Taylor, P. C. et al. A decomposition of feedback contributions to polar warming amplification. J. Clim. 26, 7023–7043 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Hall, A. The role of surface albedo feedback in climate. J. Clim. 17, 1550–1568 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Graversen, R. G. & Wang, M. Polar amplification in a coupled climate model with locked albedo. Clim. Dynam. 33, 629–643 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Arrhenius, S. On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground. London, Edinburgh, Dublin Phil. Mag. J. Sci. 41, 237–276 (1896).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. IPCC. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007)

  15. Winton, M. Amplified Arctic climate change: What does surface albedo feedback have to do with it?. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L03701 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  16. Vavrus, S. The impact of cloud feedbacks on Arctic climate under greenhouse forcing. J. Clim. 17, 603–615 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Bintanja, R., van der Linden, E. & Hazeleger, W. Boundary layer stability and Arctic climate change: A feedback study using EC-Earth. Clim. Dynam. 39, 2659–2673 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Manabe, S. & Wetherald, R. T. On the distribution of climate change resulting from an increase in CO2 content of the atmosphere. J. Atmos. Sci. 37, 99–118 (1980).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Khodri, M. et al. Simulating the amplification of orbital forcing by ocean feedbacks in the last glaciation. Nature 410, 570–574 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Spielhagen, R. F. et al. Enhanced modern heat transfer to the arctic by warm atlantic water. Science 331, 450–453 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Planck, M. Ueber das gesetz der energieverteilung im normalspectrum. Ann. Phys. 309, 553–563 (1901).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Soden, B. et al. Quantifying climate feedbacks using radiative kernels. J. Clim. 21, 3504–3520 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Zhang, M., Hack, J., Kiehl, J. & Cess, R. Diagnostic study of climate feedback processes in atmospheric general circulation models. J. Geophys. Res. 99, 5525–5537 (1994).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Hansen, J., Sato, M. & Ruedy, R. Radiative forcing and climate response. J. Geophys. Res.: Atm. 102, 6831–6864 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Held, I. & Shell, K. Using relative humidity as a state variable in climate feedback analysis. J. Clim. 25, 2578–2582 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Bintanja, R. & van der Linden, E. The changing seasonal climate in the arctic. Sci. Rep. 3, 1556 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Serreze, M., Schnell, R. & Kahl, J. Low-level temperature inversions of the Eurasian Arctic and comparisons with Soviet drifting station data. J. Clim. 5, 615–629 (1992).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Hwang, Y-T., Frierson, D. M. & Kay, J. E. Coupling between arctic feedbacks and changes in poleward energy transport. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L17704 (2011).

    Google Scholar 

  29. Held, I. M. & Soden, B. J. Robust responses of the hydrological cycle to global warming. J. Clim. 19, 5686–5699 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Block, K. & Mauritsen, T. Forcing and Feedback in the MPI-ESM-LR coupled model under abruptly quadrupled CO2 . J. Adv. Model. Earth Syst. 5, 1–16 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge K. Block for providing the radiative kernels used here and helping with their application, B. Stevens for discussions of the research and L. Tomassini for comments and feedback on the present manuscript.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Max Planck Institute for MeteorologyBundesstrasse 53 Hamburg D-20146 Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstrasse 53, Hamburg, D-20146, Germany

    Felix Pithan

Authors
  1. Felix Pithan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Thorsten Mauritsen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

T.M. developed the ideas that led to this paper. F.P. developed the inverted kernel method, analysed the model data and wrote the main paper with comments and input from T.M.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Felix Pithan.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pithan, F., Mauritsen, T. Arctic amplification dominated by temperature feedbacks in contemporary climate models. Nature Geosci 7, 181–184 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2071

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2071

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing