Journal article
Local and remote controls on observed Arctic warming
JA Screen, C Deser, I Simmonds
Geophysical Research Letters | AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION | Published : 2012
DOI: 10.1029/2012GL051598
Abstract
The Arctic is warming two to four times faster than the global average. Debate continues on the relative roles of local factors, such as sea ice reductions, versus remote factors in driving, or amplifying, Arctic warming. This study examines the vertical profile and seasonality of observed tropospheric warming, and addresses its causes using atmospheric general circulation model simulations. The simulations enable the isolation and quantification of the role of three controlling factors of Arctic warming: 1) observed Arctic sea ice concentration (SIC) and sea surface temperature (SST) changes; 2) observed remote SST changes; and 3) direct radiative forcing (DRF) due to observed changes in gr..
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Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors thank JMA, ECMWF, NASA and NCEP for providing on-line access to their reanalysis data sets. J. Screen and I. Simmonds acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council. The UM7.3 simulations were supported by an award under the Merit Allocation Scheme on the Australian National Computational Infrastructure. NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The CAM3 simulations were kindly provided by R. Tomas and A. Phillips in support of a grant from the NSF Office of Polar Programs awarded to C. Deser. Two anonymous reviewers are thanked for their time and advice.