Identification

Title

Arctic radiative fluxes: Present-day biases and future projections in CMIP5 models

Abstract

Radiative fluxes are critical for understanding the energy budget of the Arctic region, where the climate has been changing rapidly and is projected to continue to change. This work investigates causes of present-day biases and future projections of top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Arctic radiative fluxes in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Compared to Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System Energy Balanced and Filled (CERES-EBAF), CMIP5 net TOA downward shortwave (SW) flux biases are larger than outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) biases. The primary contributions to modeled TOA SW flux biases are biases in cloud amount and snow cover extent compared to the GCM-Oriented CALIPSO Cloud Product (CALIPSO-GOCCP) and the newly developed Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) dataset, respectively (with most models predicting insufficient cloud amount and snow cover in the Arctic), and biases with sea ice albedo. Future projections (2081-90) with representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) simulations suggest increasing net TOA downward SW fluxes (+8 W m⁻²) over the Arctic basin due to a decrease of surface albedo from melting snow and ice, and increasing OLR (+6 W m⁻²) due to an increase in surface temperatures. The largest contribution to future Arctic net TOA downward SW flux increases is declining sea ice area, followed by declining snow cover area on land, reductions to sea ice albedo, and reductions to snow albedo on land. Cloud amount is not projected to change significantly. These results suggest the importance of accurately representing both the surface area and albedos of sea ice and snow cover as well as cloud amount in order to accurately represent TOA radiative fluxes for the present-day climate and future projections.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7r49s08

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

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code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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date type

publication

effective date

2015-08-01T00:00:00Z

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Use constraints

Copyright 2015 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