climate models

The future of Arctic sea ice

David Docquier July 10, 2020

Figure 1: Sketch that shows the presence (in white, ‘ice covered’) and absence (in blue, ‘ice free’, i.e. less than 1 million km2 of sea ice) of Arctic sea ice for different levels of warming (X axis) and the different months of the year (Y axis), based on the extrapolation of observations. The estimated warming in 2018 is marked with ‘today’. Figure credit: Fig. 1 of Notz and Stroeve (2018).

The illustration above shows a sketch of the evolution of Arctic sea ice for different levels of warming and the different months of the year, based on the simple extrapolation of observations. A new study, in which I was involved, uses the latest available global climate models and shows that the Arctic Ocean could become practically ice free at the end of the summer for the first time before 205 ...[Read More]

For dummies – About ice sheet models and their cold relationship to climate models

Konstanze Haubner April 17, 2020

Climate models help us understand processes occurring in and between atmosphere, oceans, land and ice-covered regions of our planet. One important process impacting all of us is sea level rise, and the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland (currently losing more and more ice) play a crucial role in future sea level rise projections. Even though climate models can be very complex and include many ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Oh Sheet!

Sainan Sun September 28, 2018

Fig. 1: Overview of the ISMIP6 framework. Obtain forcing from climate models, project sea-level contributions using ice-sheet models, and explore ice-sheet-climate feedbacks. [Credit : Figure 1 in Nowicki et al., 2016 ]

The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are major players in future sea level rise. Still, there is a lot about these ice sheets we do not understand. Under the umbrella of the World Climate Research Programme, the international scientific community is coming together to improve ice sheet modelling efforts to better grasp the implications of climate change for ice sheet evolution, and consequently, ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – The future of Antarctic ice shelves

Kaitlin Naughten July 20, 2018

Climate change will increase ice shelf melting around Antarctica. That’s the not-very-surprising conclusion of a recent modelling study, resulting from a collaboration between Australian and German researchers. Here’s the less intuitive result: much of the projected melting is actually linked to a decrease in sea ice formation. Learn why in our Image of the Week… Different types ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Climate feedbacks demystified in polar regions

David Docquier July 6, 2018

Over the recent decades, the Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the whole globe. This stronger warming, called “Arctic Amplification“, especially occurs in the Arctic because ice, ocean and atmosphere interact strongly, sometimes amplifying the warming, sometimes reducing it. These interactions are called “feedbacks” and are illustrated in our Image of the Week. Let’s ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Of comparing oranges and apples in the sea-ice context

David Docquier October 27, 2017

Fig. 1: Model-to-observation comparison of sea-ice variables might best be conducted at a middle-ground "location" (along the x axis) somewhere in between what the models compute (left) and what satellites observe at the top of the atmosphere (right). Obs Oper = Observation Operators, SIC = sea-ice concentration, ISF = ice surface fraction [Credit: Lavergne, 2017 ].

In the last fifty years, models and observations have enabled us to better understand sea-ice processes. On the one hand, global climate models have been developed, accounting for the sea-ice component in the climate system. On the other hand, satellite instruments have been developed to monitor the “real” sea-ice evolution. These satellite observations are often used to evaluate climate models. H ...[Read More]