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Drivers of Arctic Ocean warming in CMIP5 models
Author(s) -
Burgard Clara,
Notz Dirk
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2016gl072342
Subject(s) - environmental science , arctic , climatology , coupled model intercomparison project , flux (metallurgy) , atmospheric sciences , climate model , heat flux , zonal and meridional , ocean current , the arctic , atmosphere (unit) , sensible heat , climate change , geology , heat transfer , oceanography , meteorology , geography , physics , materials science , metallurgy , thermodynamics
We investigate changes in the Arctic Ocean energy budget simulated by 26 general circulation models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 framework. Our goal is to understand whether the Arctic Ocean warming between 1961 and 2099 is primarily driven by changes in the net atmospheric surface flux or by changes in the meridional oceanic heat flux. We find that the simulated Arctic Ocean warming is driven by positive anomalies in the net atmospheric surface flux in 11 models, by positive anomalies in the meridional oceanic heat flux in 11 models, and by positive anomalies in both energy fluxes in four models. The different behaviors are mainly characterized by the different changes in meridional oceanic heat flux that lead to different changes in the turbulent heat loss to the atmosphere. The multimodel ensemble mean is hence not representative of a consensus across the models in Arctic climate projections.