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Recent strengthening of snow and ice albedo feedback driven by Antarctic sea-ice loss

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 832–836 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The decline of the Arctic cryosphere during recent decades has lowered the region’s surface albedo, reducing its ability to reflect solar radiation back to space. It is not clear what role the Antarctic cryosphere plays in this regard, but new remote-sensing-based techniques and datasets have recently opened the possibility to investigate its role. Here, we leverage these to show that the surface albedo reductions from sustained post-2000 losses in Arctic snow and ice cover equate to increasingly positive snow and ice albedo feedback relative to a 1982–1991 baseline period, with a decadal trend of +0.08 ± 0.04 W m–2 decade–1 between 1992 and 2015. During the same period, the expansion of the Antarctic sea-ice pack generated a negative feedback, with a decadal trend of −0.06 ± 0.02 W m–2 decade–1. However, substantial Antarctic sea-ice losses during 2016–2018 completely reversed the trend, increasing the three-year mean combined Arctic and Antarctic snow and ice albedo feedback to +0.26 ± 0.15 W m–2. This reversal highlights the importance of Antarctic sea-ice loss to the global snow and ice albedo feedback. The 1992–2018 mean feedback is equivalent to approximately 10% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the same period; the share may rise markedly should 2016–2018 snow and ice conditions become common, although increasing long-wave emissions will probably mediate the impact on the total radiative-energy budget.

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Fig. 1: Annual global mean SIAF from radiative kernels and satellite-observed surface albedo changes.
Fig. 2: Three-year global annual mean SIAF induced primarily by cryospheric albedo changes.
Fig. 3: Three-year mean SIAF with the CACK kernel over the Antarctic relative to the baseline period of 1982–1991.
Fig. 4: Inferring the global cryospheric SIAF from the CERES (EBAF v4.1) record.

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Data availability

The principal result data (annual global radiative forcings per kernel and region) are available from https://doi.org/10.23728/fmi-b2share.fb5a74c32c0b4e49989334f76b370de2. The CLARA-A2.1 albedo data are available from https://doi.org/10.5676/EUM_SAF_CM/CLARA_AVHRR/V002_01. The CC radiative kernel is available from https://climate.rsmas.miami.edu/data/radiative-kernels/index.html. The CACK radiative kernel is available from https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/d77b84b11be99ed4d5376d77fe0043d8. NSIDC-0046 and G02202 snow/sea-ice data records are available through https://nsidc.org/data. ESA-CCI LC data are available from the ESA Climate Change Initiative through http://maps.elie.ucl.ac.be/CCI/viewer/download.php. The CERES EBAF Edition 4.1 dataset is available through https://asdc.larc.nasa.gov/project/CERES/CERES_EBAF_Edition4.1. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Principal data analysis codes are available from https://doi.org/10.23728/fmi-b2share.fb5a74c32c0b4e49989334f76b370de2.

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Acknowledgements

Work of A.R. has been financially supported by the Academy of Finland, decision 309125, and R.M.B. through the Research Council of Norway, project number 294948 (EMERALD). Natural Earth map dataset is acknowledged as the coastline data source in spatially resolved figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland

    Aku Riihelä & Kati Anttila

  2. Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, Ås, Norway

    Ryan M. Bright

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Contributions

A.R. designed the study and performed the SIAF calculations. R.M.B. contributed CACK data with updated uncertainty estimates, analysed CACK–CC differences and carried out the CERES EBAF analysis. K.A. supported the SIAF analysis and analysed potential aerosol impacts. A.R., R.M.B. and K.A. all contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aku Riihelä.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Geoscience thanks Aaron Donohoe, Chad Thackeray and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Thomas Richardson, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–10, descriptions and text.

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Source data for line plots and uncertainty envelopes.

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Source data for bar charts in figure.

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Riihelä, A., Bright, R.M. & Anttila, K. Recent strengthening of snow and ice albedo feedback driven by Antarctic sea-ice loss. Nat. Geosci. 14, 832–836 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00841-x

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