Analysis of the projected regional sea-ice changes in the Southern Ocean during the twenty-first century |
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Authors: | W Lefebvre H Goosse |
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Affiliation: | 1.Institut d’Astronomie et de Géophysique Georges Lema?tre,Université Catholique de Louvain,Louvain-la-Neuve,Belgium |
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Abstract: | Using the set of simulations performed with atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) for the Fourth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4), the projected regional distribution of sea ice for the
twenty-first century has been investigated. Averaged over all those model simulations, the current climate is reasonably well
reproduced. However, this averaging procedure hides the errors from individual models. Over the twentieth century, the multimodel
average simulates a larger sea-ice concentration decrease around the Antarctic Peninsula compared to other regions, which
is in qualitative agreement with observations. This is likely related to the positive trend in the Southern Annular Mode (SAM)
index over the twentieth century, in both observations and in the multimodel average. Despite the simulated positive future
trend in SAM, such a regional feature around the Antarctic Peninsula is absent in the projected sea-ice change for the end
of the twenty-first century. The maximum decrease is indeed located over the central Weddell Sea and the Amundsen–Bellingshausen
Seas. In most models, changes in the oceanic currents could play a role in the regional distribution of the sea ice, especially
in the Ross Sea, where stronger southward currents could be responsible for a smaller sea-ice decrease during the twenty-first
century. Finally, changes in the mixed layer depth can be found in some models, inducing locally strong changes in the sea-ice
concentration.
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Keywords: | Climate change Sea ice Southern ocean Mechanisms Regional patterns |
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