Sensitivity of Antarctic sea ice to the Southern Annular Mode in coupled climate models

Basin-scale heterogeneity in Antarctic precipitation and its impact on surface mass variability

“…In a similar vein, the ABSL tends to exhibit notable biases in seasonal longitudinal position across a range of climate models (Hosking et al, 2013). However, this dynamical bias is notably minimized in CESM (Hosking et al, 2013;Holland et al, 2016) and is thus unlikely to impact differences between CESM and RACMO2 inter-basin correlations (Fig. 3).…”

“…However, some fraction of the CESM-simulated structure of inter-basin variability that CESM demonstrates may reflect model bias in both CESM-simulated mean atmospheric circulation and atmospheric circulation variability. For example, Holland et al (2016) note a general climate model bias towards too-weak modes of non-annular variability in zonal atmospheric flow (e.g., Raphael, 2004) that is shared by CESM. This CESM bias is likely spuriously reducing basinscale counteracting variability, thereby dampening the pattern of counteracting basin-scale variability and potentially explaining the relatively lower magnitude of (anti-) correlation values relative to RACMO2 (Fig.…”

“…CESM is a comprehensive coupled Earth system model that is used for a diverse range of applications, including recent explorations of Southern Hemisphere and Antarctic climate (e.g., Holland et al, 2016;Lenaerts et al, 2016). The particular CESM simulation we focus our analysis on is a ∼ 1 • resolution preindustrial control simulation of the CESM Large Ensemble experiment (CESM LE hereafter; Kay et al, 2015).…”

The Ross Sea Dipole – temperature, snow accumulation and sea ice variability in the Ross Sea region, Antarctica, over the past 2700 years

“…No such pattern is observed for regional surface air temperature (SAT) (Marshall and Thompson, 2016), which might be masked by the influence of regional sea ice variability on local temperatures. The positive SAM has been shown to contribute at least partially to an increase in total Antarctic sea ice, while a negative SAM has been associated with a reduced sea ice (Ferreira et al, 2015;Holland et al, 2017;Bintanja et al, 2013;Kohyama and Hartmann, 2015;Turner et al, 2017). The future behaviour of the SAM over the next decades is a topic of active research due to the competing and seasonally biased influences of projected stratospheric ozone recovery and greenhouse gas emissions (Bracegirdle et al, 2014;Gillett and Fyfe, 2013;Thompson et al, 2011).…”

Moisture transport and Antarctic sea ice: Austral spring 2016 event

“…Given that the SAM has been associated with the trimming of the annual sea ice advance and retreat (Stammerjohn et al, 2008;Lefebre et al, 2004;Holland et al, 2017), in this sub-section we examine the regional response of the Antarctic sea 25 ice, at monthly time scales, in relationship with SAM variability. Previous studies have shown that there is a regional response of the Antarctic sea ice to SAM-related forcings (Liu et al, 2004;Simpkins et al, 2012).…”