Published January 16, 2025 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Linking Radiative-Advective Equilibrium Regime Transition to Arctic Amplification

  • 1. National Taiwan University
  • 2. National Center for Atmospheric Research
  • 3. University of Chicago
  • 4. Princeton University
  • 5. Columbia University

Description

Emission of anthropogenic greenhouse gases has resulted in greater Arctic warming compared to global warming, known as Arctic amplification (AA). From an energy‐balance perspective, the current Arctic climate is in radiative‐advective equilibrium (RAE) regime, in which radiative cooling is balanced by advective heat flux convergence. Exploiting a suite of climate model simulations with varying carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, we link the northern high‐latitude regime variation and transition to AA. The dominance of RAE regime in northern high‐latitudes under CO2 reduction relates to stronger AA, whereas the RAE regime transition to non‐RAE regime under CO2 increase corresponds to a weaker AA. Examinations on the spatial and seasonal structures reveal that lapse‐rate and sea‐ice processes are crucial mechanisms. Our findings suggest that if CO2 concentration continues to rise, the Arctic could transition into a non‐RAE regime accompanied with a weaker AA.

Data availability

The data of CO2 experiments can be obtained via Mitevski, Polvani, and Orbe (2021). The plotting Python scripts can be downloaded from Liang (2024).

Files

Linking-Radiative-Advective-Equilibrium-Regime-Transition-to-Arctic-Amplification.pdf

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1029/2024GL113417
Other
oai:uchicago.tind.io:14411

Funding

National Science and Technology Council
112-2628-M-002-009
National Science and Technology Council
113-2628-M-002-018
Princeton University
Harry Hess post-doctoral fellowship
U.S. National Science Foundation

UChicago Information

Division(s)
Physical Sciences Division
Department(s)
Geophysical Sciences