Public Release: 19-Jan-2019
New study reveals local drivers of amplified Arctic warming
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology(UNIST)
IMAGE: An international team of researchers, including Professor Sarah Kang (left) and DoYeon Kim (right) in the School of Urban and Environmental Engineering at UNIST, has unveiled that local greenhouse gas… view more
Credit: UNIST
The Artic experienced an extreme heat wave during the February 2018. The temperature at the North Pole has soared to the melting point of ice, which is about 30-35 degrees (17-19 Celsius) above normal. There have also been recent studies, indicating the mass of Arctic glaciers has declined significantly since the 1980’s by more than 70%. These sudden climate changes affected not just the Arctic regions, but also the water, food, and energy security nexus throughout the globe. This is why climate scientists from around the world are paying increasing attention to this accelerated warming pattern, commonly referred to as ‘Arctic Amplification’.
An international team of researchers, including Professor Sarah Kang and DoYeon Kim in the School of Urban and Environmental Engineering at UNIST, has unveiled that local greenhouse gas concentrations appear to be attributable to Arctic Amplification.
Published in the November 2018 issue of Nature Climate Change, their study on the cause of Arctic Amplification shows that local greenhouse gas concentrations, and Arctic climate feedbacks outweigh other processes. This study has been led by Assistant Project Leader Malte F. Stuecker from the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) in Busan, South Korea and participated by researchers around the globe, including United States, Austrailia, and China.
Long-term observations of surface temperatures show an intensified surface warming in Canada, Siberia, Alaska and in the Arctic Ocean relative to global mean temperature rise. Arctic Amplification is consistent with computer models, simulating the response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. However, the underlying physical processes for the intensified warming still remain elusive.
Using complex computer simulations, the scientists were able to disprove previously suggested hypotheses, that emphasized the role of transport of heat from the tropics to the poles as one of the key contributors to the amplified warming in the Arctic.
“Our study clearly shows that local carbon dioxide forcing and polar feedbacks are most effective in Arctic amplification compared to other processes”, says Assistant Project Leader Malte F. Stuecker, the corresponding author of the study.
Increasing anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations trap heat in the atmosphere, which leads to surface warming. Regional processes can then further amplify or dampen this effect, thereby creating the typical pattern of global warming. In the Arctic region, surface warming reduces snow and sea-ice extent, which in turn decreases the reflectivity of the surface. As a result, more sunlight can reach the top of layers of the soil and ocean, leading to accelerated warming. Furthermore, changes in Arctic clouds and of the vertical atmospheric temperature profile can enhance warming in the polar regions.
In addition to these factors, heat can be transported into the Arctic by winds. “We see this process for instance during El Niño events. Tropical warming, caused either by El Niño or anthropogenic greenhouse emissions, can cause global shifts in atmospheric weather patterns, which may lead to changes in surface temperatures in remote regions, such as the Arctic”, said Kyle Armour, co-author of the study and professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Oceanography at the University of Washington.
Moreover, global warming outside the Arctic region will also lead to an increase in Atlantic Ocean temperatures. Ocean currents, such as the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic drift can then transport the warmer waters to the Arctic ocean, where they could melt sea ice and experience further amplification due to local processes.
To determine whether tropical warming, atmospheric wind and ocean current changes contribute to future Arctic Amplification, the team designed a series of computer model simulations. “By comparing simulations with only Arctic CO2 changes with simulations that apply CO2 globally, we find similar Arctic warming patterns. These findings demonstrate that remote physical processes from outside the polar regions do not play a major role, in contrast to previous suggestions”, says co-author Cecilia Bitz, professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington.
In the tropics – fueled by high temperature and moisture – air can easily move up to high altitudes, meaning the atmosphere is unstable. In contrast, the Arctic atmosphere is much more stable with respect to vertical air movement. This condition enhances the CO2-induced warming in the Arctic near the surface. In the tropics – due to the unstable atmosphere – CO2 mostly warms the upper atmosphere and energy is easily lost to space. This is opposite to what happens in the Arctic: Less outgoing infrared radiation escapes the atmosphere, which further amplifies the surface-trapped warming.
“Our computer simulations show that these changes in the vertical atmospheric temperature profile in the Arctic region outweigh other regional feedback factors, such as the often-cited ice-albedo feedback” says Malte Stuecker.
The findings of this study highlights the importance of Arctic processes in controlling the pace at which sea-ice will retreat in the Arctic Ocean. The results are also important to understand how sensitive polar ecosystems, Arctic permafrost and the Greenland ice-sheet will respond to Global Warming.
###
Notes for Editors The above material has been provided by Institute of Basic Science.
Journal Reference
Stuecker, M. F., C. M. Bitz, K. C. Armour, C. Proistosescu, S. M. Kang, S.-P. Xie, D. Kim, S. McGregor, W. Zhang, S. Zhao, W. Cai, Y. Dong, and F.-F. Jin, “Polar amplification dominated by local forcing and feedbacks”, Nature Climate Change (2018), doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0339-y
About the Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
IBS was founded in 2011 by the government of the Republic of Korea with the sole purpose of driving forward the development of basic science in South Korea. IBS has launched 28 research centers as of August 2018. There are nine physics, one mathematics, six chemistry, eight life science, one earth science, and three interdisciplinary research centers.
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The following consists of six (6) extremely, extremely, EXTREMELY important statements quoted from the above article that everyone should pay close attention too.
Are you trying to be sarcastic? Or can’t you understand the actual paper (never mind the press release, it is impossible to reconstruct what they actually did from the press-release).
“HA”, to ell with what the “press release” stated, ….. it would be impossible for anyone to reconstruct what they claimed was the “results” of complex computer models and simulations.
l was talking to a polar bear last week, He commented that he hoped the Nips did not acquire the same taste for polar bears that they have for whales.
The CO2 horsesh*t has to stop. It is pure and utter horsesh*t.
“Arctic Amplification is consistent with computer models, simulating the response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. However, the underlying physical processes for the intensified warming still remain elusive.”
This explains it all, right here. If they don’t understand the underlying physical processes of some phenomena then it’s impossible for their model, which is nothing more than their encoded intelligence of the physical processes, to be accurate. It’s not possible to accurately model something that’s not thoroughly understood.
I wonder who’s copying whom in the area of publishing authoritative hype that is later revealed, but with the public not knowing or caring about the revelation. The practice exists in every area of political impact and it isn’t just the media involved.
So basically this is a worthy tall tale like the ones told about the quest for the Holy Grail.
There was no melting, the temperature did not rise in any unusual way, the sun still doesn’t shine in February, even though the article imokies otherwise.
And 70% of Arctic glaciers have not melted.
But the brave climatologists, armored up against all reason or data, continue their bold faith quest to find the climate Holy Grail.
“We provide an analysis of Greenland temperature records to compare the current (1995–2005) warming period with the previous (1920–1930) Greenland warming. We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920–1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995–2005.”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2006GL026510
Chief author was Petr Chýlek, who made a great career move (sarc), as explained in Wikipedia:
Petr Chýlek authored an email titled “Open Letter to the Climate Research Community” and sent it to 100 of his Climate Research peers. In the email, he writes that the climate science community has “substituted the search for truth with an attempt at proving one point of view” and suggests “Let us drastically modify or temporarily discontinue the IPCC.”
According to Tony Heller, the earlier warming has now been greatly attenuated by temperature ‘homogenization’.
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/07/nasa-tampers-with-icelands-data-yet-again/
This was a big deal for the Krazy Klimateers last year, trying to link an anomaly to proof of CC in the Arctic. When did 13-17 C above or below average ever become an issue anywhere else? It happens regularly in temperate regions and especially polar regions and is probably the norm over multiple millennia for a very long time especially during interglacials. We don’t have thermometers over much of the Arctic or Antarctica there yet, so why should it be surprising?
The interesting thing is that all that heat would soon be radiated away to space, gone from the good Earth forever. Ultimately, that would be more about the cooling than the warming of the earth, and this additional heat was part of the El Niño cooling of tropical heat being shed to the poles. It seems to me they got all this backwards, thinking the temporary warming Arctic is somehow a long term problem. The earth is just adjusting its built in thermostatic equalization payment via the tempature gradient from the tropics to the poles. Be thankful it was 13-17 C above normal, and not below normal. It can go both ways.
“…the mass of Arctic glaciers has declined significantly since the 1980’s by more than 70%.”
AEUHHH???
Seriously, who writes this garbage? Assuming by “Arctic glaciers” they mean the arctic ice cap, then they are off by orders of magnitude with that 70% figure.
If that was correct sea-levels would have risen about 5 meters since the 1970’s. I am fairly certain that this would have been noticed.
“Our models which, we designed, showed exactly what we were looking for and now we have another very clever paper to add to our CV’s. Isn’t science wonderful?”
Another group of pseudo scientists who gave up on real research in exchange for a free ride on the global warming/climate change band wagon.
Considering that for warming to occur the GHGs need sunlight to trap the rays, may I ask how much sunlight the North Pole gets in February?
And how much is modeled?
I just used complex computer simulations to prove I am a genius. What I did was… genius!!!
Looks like satellites imagery coupled with measures are wrong after all… ROTFLOL
“Using complex computer simulations..”
Great choice of language!
“Simulations” sound so much more scientific than “Models”.
“Less outgoing infrared radiation escapes the atmosphere, which further amplifies the surface-trapped warming”
Who can explain precisely how CO2 can “trap” any significant quantity of thermal energy in the atmosphere for, let’s say, more than a few milliseconds?
What it does is to absorb and thermalize LWIR which is then moved to altitude by convection rather than by radiation. All other things equal this will entail a very slight rise in surface temperature.
However things get more complicated in arctic areas in winter due to the very high emissivity of snow, and virtual absence of water vapour which causes semi-stable temperature inversions in some areas. In extreme cases (like central Antarctica) more CO2 actually cools the surface.
“What it does is to absorb and thermalize LWIR which is then moved to altitude by convection rather than by radiation. All other things equal this will entail a very slight rise in surface temperature.”
That makes no sense. If the thermalized molecule rises it will lose energy due to adiabatic cooling. That energy is not transferred as heat anywhere because it’s lost in work elevating the gas.
Better said: “it’s lost as thermal energy in work elevating the gas where it’s converted to potential energy.”
No, the energy is lost when the molecule has risen far enough for the LWIR to disappear into space (actually most of the energy is energy of evaporation, which is liberated as the water vapour condenses).
The energy transformed into energy of position as the air rises is regained when the cooled air (and rain/snow) descends again.
The atmosphere is a huge heat engine.
If a molecule has lost kinetic energy via adiabatic cooling, it doesn’t have it anymore to radiate.
Please indulge me!
Explain in detail how the CO2-molecule generates heat in the Arctic in February to melt ice.
Of curse it doesn’t since there is no local source of LWIR energy when the sun is below the horizon, whatever these two ladies believe. The heat there is is all transported there from lower latitudes.
I thought that the local drivers of greenhouse gases in the Arctic were due to the increase in the polar bear population over the past 30-40 years, and the accompanying increase in flatulence. Could also be from the increase in human beings on yachts getting stuck arctic ice while trying to make a northwest passage.
All criticism of this paper has to be fueled by racism and anti-feminism. Oh, and anti-intellectualism and anti-science-ism. (sarc/off)
So their computer model showed what they wanted it to show. How very exciting for them.
“The temperature at the North Pole has soared to the melting point of ice, which is about 30-35 degrees (17-19 Celsius) above normal. There have also been recent studies, indicating the mass of Arctic glaciers has declined significantly since the 1980’s by more than 70%. ”
OH NOES! WE’S ALL GOWNA DROWN!!
Wait………..what? Seal levels haven’t changed? Anywhere?
Nebber’min’
Worse than we thought possible…
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/greenland-southwest-ice-melt-accelerating-1.4986064
“This is horrifying really.
– Michael Bevis, geophysicist”
No comment yet from Butthead. LOL
Notice that the study ended in 2012 while it is now 2019?
Here is why:
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/polarportal-saesonrapport-2018-EN.pdf
Take a look at Figure 5….
“Using complex computer simulations, the scientists were able to disprove previously suggested hypotheses…”
Oh dear. Did the original author honestly see nothing wrong with this sentence?
Also, in the photo at the top of the article we are told that Professor Sarah Kang is on the left and DoYeon Kim on the right. So who is the dark haired woman in the middle? 🙂
I hate to get too picky [NOT!] but the authors use the term “sudden climate change”. Isn’t that self contradictory? If it – the temperature rise (ie weather)- is indeed sudden then how can it be climate change because climate change is the sum of all weather?
Actually “sudden climate changes” do happen. There can be a step change from one fairly stable climate state to another.
Such are (fortunately) very rare during interglacials, but happen fairly frequently during glaciations and at the beginning of an interglacial. Whether they also occur at the end of interglacials is more uncertain.