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The Amplified Arctic Warming in the Recent Decades may Have Been Overestimated by CMIP5 Models
Author(s) -
Huang Jianbin,
Ou Tinghai,
Chen Deliang,
Luo Yong,
Zhao Zongci
Publication year - 2019
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 - 10.1029/2019gl084385
Subject(s) - arctic , climatology , environmental science , global warming , the arctic , secular variation , climate change , atmospheric sciences , oceanography , geology , geophysics
Realistically representing the Arctic amplification in global climate models (GCMs) represents a key to accurately predict the climate system's response to increasing anthropogenic forcings. We examined the amplified Arctic warming over the past century simulated by 36 state‐of‐the‐art GCMs against observation. We found a clear difference between the simulations and the observation in terms of the evolution of the secular warming rates. The observed rates of the secular Arctic warming increase from 0.14 °C/10a in the early 1890s to 0.21 °C/10a in the mid‐2010s, while the GCMs show a negligible trend to 0.35 °C/10a at the corresponding times. The overestimation of the secular warming rate in the GCMs starts from the mid‐twentieth century and aggravates with time. Further analysis indicates that the overestimation mainly comes from the exaggerated heating contribution from the Arctic sea ice melting. This result implies that the future secular Arctic warming may have been over‐projected.