Identification

Title

True to Milankovitch: Glacial inception in the new community climate system model

Abstract

The equilibrium solution of a fully coupled general circulation model with present-day orbital forcing is compared to the solution of the same model with the orbital forcing from 115 000 years ago. The difference in snow accumulation between these two simulations has a pattern and a magnitude comparable to the ones inferred from reconstructions for the last glacial inception. This is a major improvement over previous similar studies, and the increased realism is attributed to the higher spatial resolution in the atmospheric model, which allows for a more accurate representation of the orography of northern Canada and Siberia. The analysis of the atmospheric heat budget reveals that, as postulated by Milankovitch's hypothesis, the only necessary positive feedback is the snow–albedo feedback, which is initiated by reduced melting of snow and sea ice in the summer. However, this positive feedback is almost fully compensated by an increased meridional heat transport in the atmosphere and a reduced concentration of low Arctic clouds. In contrast to similar previous studies, the ocean heat transport remains largely unchanged. This stability of the northern North Atlantic circulation is explained by the regulating effect of the freshwater import through the Nares Strait and Northwest Passage and the spiciness import by the North Atlantic Current.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7qc044w

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2012-04-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2012 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact