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Climate Change in the Arctic

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Physics and Chemistry of the Arctic Atmosphere

Part of the book series: Springer Polar Sciences ((SPPS))

Abstract

Observations over the last decades showed large changes in the Arctic regions with a strong warming of the Arctic, which is about twice that of the global mean warming. The largest warming rates with up to 10 K since 1980 are reached near the surface in the Chukchi Sea in autumn and in the Barents Sea in winter. Changes in Arctic climate are a result of complex interactions between the cryosphere, atmosphere, and ocean and different processes contribute to the amplified warming signal such as the ice albedo feedback, changes in clouds and water vapour, enhanced meridional energy transport in the atmosphere and in the ocean, vertical mixing in Arctic winter inversions and temperature feedbacks.

The observed warming is concurrent with a large reduction of the sea ice cover particularly in summer and autumn. The impact of Arctic amplification and sea ice retreat on the atmospheric circulation is still discussed. Positive winter sea level pressure trends along the Siberian Arctic coast have been linked to negative winter temperature trends over Central Asia.

Ocean heat and freshwater transports into and out of the Arctic undergo changes as well with potentially strong consequences for deep water formation in the North Atlantic Ocean and the entire large scale oceanic circulation.

Climate projections indicate that the Arctic will continue to warm faster than the rest of the world in the twenty-first century. Whether summer sea ice is going to melt completely depends on the future emission scenario.

This chapter will review the state of knowledge of mechanisms of the observed changes, the potential consequences of future Arctic warming for sea ice, ocean and atmosphere, and uncertainties due to emission scenarios, model shortcomings and natural variability.

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Acknowledgements

Torben Koenigk has been supported by the NordForsk-funded Nordic Centre of Excellence project (award 76654) Arctic Climate Predictions: Pathways to Resilient, Sustainable Societies (ARCPATH) together with the JPI-CLimate-Belmont Forum project 407, InterDec. The research on cloud-ice interactions and snow- and ice-albedo feedbacks described herein was supported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Data Records program. Thanks are due to Aaron Letterly, Yinghui Liu, Xuanji Wang, and Richard Dworak for their contributions to those projects. The views, opinions, and findings contained in this report are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as an official National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or US Government position, policy, or decision.

Timo Vihma has been supported by the Academy of Finland (contract 317999).

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  1. Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Norrköping, Sweden

    Torben Koenigk

  2. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Madison, WI, USA

    Jeff Key

  3. Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland

    Timo Vihma

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  1. Torben Koenigk
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    Alexander Kokhanovsky

  2. Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), Italian National Research Council (CNR), Bologna, Italy

    Claudio Tomasi

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Koenigk, T., Key, J., Vihma, T. (2020). Climate Change in the Arctic. In: Kokhanovsky, A., Tomasi, C. (eds) Physics and Chemistry of the Arctic Atmosphere. Springer Polar Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33566-3_11

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