Publication Date:
2015-12-06
Description:
Climate models exhibit large biases in sea ice area (SIA) in their historical simulations. This study has explored the impacts of these biases on multi-model uncertainty in CMIP5 ensemble projections of 21 st century change in Antarctic surface temperature, net precipitation and SIA. The analysis is based on time slice climatologies in the RCP8.5 future scenario (2070–2099) and historical (1970–1999) simulations across 37 different CMIP5 models. Projected changes in net precipitation, temperature and SIA are found to be strongly associated with simulated historical mean SIA (e.g. cross-model correlations of r = 0.77, 0.71 and −0.85, respectively). Furthermore, historical SIA bias is found to have a large impact on the simulated ratio between net precipitation response and temperature response. This ratio is smaller in models with smaller-than-observed SIA. These strong emergent relationships on SIA bias could, if found to be physically robust, be exploited to give more precise climate projections for Antarctica.
Print ISSN:
0094-8276
Electronic ISSN:
1944-8007
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Physics
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