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| 2. |
- Berger, Marit, 1986-
(författare)
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Modelling the early to mid-Holocene Arctic climate
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the recent past it has become evident that the Earth's climate is changing, and that human activity play a significant role in these changes. One of the regions where the ongoing climate change has been most evident is in the Arctic: the surface temperature has increased twice as much in this region as compared to the global average, in addition, a significant decline in the Arctic sea-ice extent has been observed in the past decades. Climate model studies of past climates are important tools to understand the ongoing climate change and how the Earth's climate may respond to changes in the forcing.This thesis includes studies of the Arctic climate in simulations of the early and mid-Holocene, 9 000 and 6 000 years before present. Changes in the Earth's orbital parameters resulted in increased summer insolation as compared to present day, especially at high northern latitudes. Geological data imply that the surface temperatures in the early to mid Holocene were similar to those projected for the near future. In addition, the geological data implies that the Arctic sea ice cover was significantly reduced in this period. This makes the early to mid-Holocene an interesting period to study with respect to the changes observed in the region at present.Several model studies of the mid-Holocene have been performed through the Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project (PMIP1 to PMIP3). The simulations have been performed with climate models of varying complexity, from atmosphere-only models in the first phase to fully coupled models with the same resolution as used for future climate simulations in the third phase. The first part of this thesis investigates the simulated sea ice in the pre-industrial and mid-Holocene simulations included in the PMIP2 and PMIP3 ensemble. As the complexity of the models increases, the models simulate smaller extents and thinner sea ice in the Arctic; the sea-ice extent suggested by the proxy data for the mid-Holocene is however not reproduced by the majority of the models.One possible explanation for the discrepancy between the simulated and reconstructed Arctic sea ice extent is missing or inadequate representations of important processes. The representation of atmospheric aerosol direct and indirect effects in past climates is a candidate process. Previous studies of deeper time periods have concluded that the representation of the direct and indirect effects of the atmospheric aerosols can influence the simulated climates, and reduce the equator to pole temperature gradient in past warm climates, in better agreement with reconstructions. The second part of the thesis investigates the influence of aerosol on the early Holocene climate. The indirect effect of reduced aerosol concentrations as compared to the present day is found to cause an amplification of the warming, especially in the Arctic region. A better agreement with reconstructed Arctic sea ice extent is thus achieved.
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| 3. |
- Berger, Marit, et al.
(författare)
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Pristine aerosol concentrations, cloud droplet size and early Holocene climate
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This work investigates how the simulated early Holocene climate is influenced by the representation of aerosols and their effect on the climate. The representations of the direct and first indirect aerosol effects in the Community Earth System Model, version1 (CESM1) are modified in two sensitivity experiments.In the first sensitivity experiment (CESM 9k R14), the first indirect effect on the simulated climate is modified by setting the cloud droplet effective radius, (Reff ) in the model to a constant value. This value is chosen to be representative for pristine conditions. In the second sensitivity experiment (CESM 9k CAMO), the representation of both the direct and first indirect effects is modified. An atmosphere-only model with interactive aerosols is used to simulate the early Holocene aerosol loading and the change in Reff due to the decrease in atmospheric aerosols.The changes in aerosol effects introduced in the two sensitivity experiments differ both in magnitude and spatial pattern. We find that despite the difference in the spatial pattern of the changes in the aerosol effects, the warming patterns in the two sensitivity experiments are similar; the surface temperature increases in both simulations, with an enhanced warming in the Arctic region. The warming is approximately twice as large in the CESM 9k R14 simulation than in the CESM 9k CAMO simulation.
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| 4. |
- Berger, Marit, et al.
(författare)
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The sensitivity of the Arctic sea ice to orbitally induced insolation changes : a study of the mid-Holocene Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project 2 and 3 simulations
- 2013
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Ingår i: Climate of the Past. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1814-9324 .- 1814-9332. ; 9:2, s. 969-982
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the present work the Arctic sea ice in the mid-Holocene and the pre-industrial climates are analysed and compared on the basis of climate-model results from the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project phase 2 (PMIP2) and phase 3 (PMIP3). The PMIP3 models generally simulate smaller and thinner sea-ice extents than the PMIP2 models both for the pre-industrial and the mid-Holocene climate. Further, the PMIP2 and PMIP3 models all simulate a smaller and thinner Arctic summer sea-ice cover in the mid-Holocene than in the pre-industrial control climate. The PMIP3 models also simulate thinner winter sea ice than the PMIP2 models. The winter sea-ice extent response, i.e. the difference between the mid-Holocene and the pre-industrial climate, varies among both PMIP2 and PMIP3 models. Approximately one half of the models simulate a decrease in winter sea-ice extent and one half simulates an increase. The model-mean summer sea-ice extent is 11% (21 %) smaller in the mid-Holocene than in the pre-industrial climate simulations in the PMIP2 (PMIP3). In accordance with the simple model of Thorndike (1992), the sea-ice thickness response to the insolation change from the pre-industrial to the mid-Holocene is stronger in models with thicker ice in the pre-industrial climate simulation. Further, the analyses show that climate models for which the Arctic sea-ice responses to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations are similar may simulate rather different sea-ice responses to the change in solar forcing between the mid-Holocene and the pre-industrial. For two specific models, which are analysed in detail, this difference is found to be associated with differences in the simulated cloud fractions in the summer Arctic; in the model with a larger cloud fraction the effect of insolation change is muted. A sub-set of the mid-Holocene simulations in the PMIP ensemble exhibit open water off the north-eastern coast of Greenland in summer, which can provide a fetch for surface waves. This is in broad agreement with recent analyses of sea-ice proxies, indicating that beach-ridges formed on the north-eastern coast of Greenland during the early-to mid-Holocene.
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| 5. |
- Goosse, H., et al.
(författare)
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Modelling past sea ice changes
- 2013
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Ingår i: Quaternary Science Reviews. - : Elsevier BV. - 0277-3791 .- 1873-457X. ; 79, s. 191-206
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A dominant characteristic of the available simulations of past sea ice changes is the strong link between the model results for modern and past climates. Nearly all the models have similar extent for pre-industrial conditions and for the mid-Holocene. The models with the largest extent at Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) are also characterized by large pre-industrial values. As a consequence, the causes of model biases and of the spread of model responses identified for present-day conditions appear relevant when simulating the past sea ice changes. Nevertheless, the models that display a relatively realistic sea-ice cover for present-day conditions often display contrasted response for some past periods. The difference appears particularly large for the LGM in the Southern Ocean and for the summer ice extent in the Arctic for the early Holocene (and to a smaller extent for the mid-Holocene). Those periods are thus key ones to evaluate model behaviour and model physics in conditions different from those of the last decades. Paleoclimate modelling is also an invaluable tool to test hypotheses that could explain the signal recorded by proxies and thus to improve our understanding of climate dynamics. Model analyses have been focused on specific processes, such as the role of atmospheric and ocean heat transport in sea ice changes or the relative magnitude of the model response to different forcings. The studies devoted to the early Holocene provide an interesting example in this framework as both radiative forcing and freshwater discharge from the ice sheets were very different compared to now. This is thus a good target to identify the dominant processes ruling the system behaviour and to evaluate the way models represent them.
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