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Respective roles of direct GHG radiative forcing and induced Arctic sea ice loss on the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation

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Abstract

The large-scale and synoptic-scale Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation responses to projected late twenty-first century Arctic sea ice decline induced by increasing Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) concentrations are investigated using the CNRM-CM5 coupled model. An original protocol, based on a flux correction technique, allows isolating the respective roles of GHG direct radiative effect and induced Arctic sea ice loss under RCP8.5 scenario. In winter, the surface atmospheric response clearly exhibits opposing effects between GHGs increase and Arctic sea ice loss, leading to no significant pattern in the total response (particularly in the North Atlantic region). An analysis based on Eady growth rate shows that Arctic sea ice loss drives the weakening in the low-level meridional temperature gradient, causing a general decrease of the baroclinicity in the mid and high latitudes, whereas the direct impact of GHGs increase is more located in the mid-to-high troposphere. Changes in the flow waviness, evaluated from sinuosity and blocking frequency metrics, are found to be small relative to inter-annual variability.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully thank Laure Coquart and Marie-Pierre Moine for their help to handle the climate model. We also thank Clara Deser for hosting T. Oudar at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) in October 2015, as well as the CGD/CAS (Climate and Global Dynamics/Climate Analysis Section) team for their constructive comments and suggestions. The figures were produce with the NCAR Command Language Software (10.5065/D6WD3XH5). This study was funded by the MORDICUS Grant under contract ANR-13-SENV-0002-01 and by Météo France. Finally, we wish to thank the four anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions.

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Correspondence to Thomas Oudar.

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Oudar, T., Sanchez-Gomez, E., Chauvin, F. et al. Respective roles of direct GHG radiative forcing and induced Arctic sea ice loss on the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation. Clim Dyn 49, 3693–3713 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3541-0

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