Arctic sea ice in CMIP6

We examine CMIP6 simulations of Arctic sea-ice area and volume. We find that CMIP6 models produce a wide spread of mean Arctic sea-ice area, capturing the observational estimate within the multimodel ensemble spread. The CMIP6 multimodel ensemble mean provides a more realistic estimate of the sensitivity of September Arctic sea-ice area to a given amount of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and to a given amount of global warming, compared with earlier CMIP experiments. Still, most CMIP6 models fail to simulate at the same time a plausible evolution of sea-ice area and of global mean surface temperature. In the vast majority of the available CMIP6 simulations, the Arctic Ocean becomes practically sea-ice free (sea-ice area <1 x 10(6) km(2)) in September for the first time before the Year 2050 in each of the four emission scenarios SSP1-1.9, SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5 examined here.

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Author SIMIP Community
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2020-05-28T00:00:00
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Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:31:59.105195
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:23588
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation SIMIP Community. (2020). Arctic sea ice in CMIP6. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d74q7z70. Accessed 21 June 2025.

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