Identification

Title

Inter-annual to multi-decadal Arctic sea ice extent trends in a warming world

Abstract

A climate model (CCSM4) is used to investigate the influence of anthropogenic forcing on late 20th century and early 21st century Arctic sea ice extent trends. On all timescales examined (2-50++ years), the most extreme negative observed late 20th century trends cannot be explained by modeled natural variability alone. Modeled late 20th century ice extent loss also cannot be explained by natural causes alone, but the six available CCSM4 ensemble members exhibit a large spread in their late 20th century ice extent loss. Comparing trends from the CCSM4 ensemble to observed trends suggests that internal variability explains approximately half of the observed 1979-2005 September Arctic sea ice extent loss. In a warming world, CCSM4 shows that multi-decadal negative trends increase in frequency and magnitude, and that trend variability on 2-10 year timescales increases. Furthermore, when internal variability counteracts anthropogenic forcing, positive trends on 2-20 year timescales occur until the middle of the 21st century.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7hd7w61

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

2011-08-11T00:00:00Z

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

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