The Role of Atmospheric Blocking in Regulating Arctic Warming

You, Cheng; Tjernström, Michael; Devasthale, Abhay; Steinfeld, Daniel

doi:10.1029/2022gl097899

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(81 reference statements)

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“…Increased winter warmth, as seen in 2020, reflects changes in circulation that draw more heat and moisture from lower latitudes ( 24 ). Circulation in eastern Siberia draws air and moisture from all directions of the compass ( 25 ) and is not immune to the so-called circulation “blocking” ( 26 ) seen elsewhere across the continent ( 27 ). Nonetheless, most burning occurs during relatively gentle winds blowing from the northeast, indicating that the processes that promote flammability may be distinct from those that promote the subsequent burning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unprecedented fire activity above the Arctic Circle linked to rising temperatures

Descals

Gaveau²,

Verger

et al. 2022

Science

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Arctic fires can release large amounts of carbon from permafrost peatlands. Satellite observations reveal that fires burned ~4.7 million hectares in 2019 and 2020, accounting for 44% of the total burned area in the Siberian Arctic for the entire 1982–2020 period. The summer of 2020 was the warmest in four decades, with fires burning an unprecedentedly large area of carbon-rich soils. We show that factors of fire associated with temperature have increased in recent decades and identified a near-exponential relationship between these factors and annual burned area. Large fires in the Arctic are likely to recur with climatic warming before mid-century, because the temperature trend is reaching a threshold in which small increases in temperature are associated with exponential increases in the area burned.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unprecedented fire activity above the Arctic Circle linked to rising temperatures

Descals

Gaveau²,

Verger

et al. 2022

Science

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“…Increasing amount of water vapor in the atmosphere at the mid‐latitudes as the climate warms could partly explain this (Gershunov et al., 2017). For the Arctic, changes in circulation, with increasing frequency of blockings also drive the increase in moisture transport (Nygård et al., 2020; You et al., 2022), whereas in Antarctica, trends on the Amundsen Sea Low might explain AR trends in the Amundsen‐Bellinghausen Sea (Turner et al., 2013; Wille et al., 2021). Trends in AR activity across Antarctica are similar with previously observed trends, but are slightly sensitive to the choice of the reanalysis product used for AR detection (Wille et al., 2021).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polar Aerosol Atmospheric Rivers: Detection, Characteristics, and Potential Applications

Lapere,

Thomas,

Favier

et al. 2024

JGR Atmospheres

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Aerosols play a key role in polar climate, and are affected by long‐range transport from the mid‐latitudes, both in the Arctic and Antarctic. This work investigates poleward extreme transport events of aerosols, referred to as polar aerosol atmospheric rivers (p‐AAR), leveraging the concept of atmospheric rivers (AR) which signal extreme transport of moisture. Using reanalysis data, we build a detection catalog of p‐AARs for black carbon, dust, sea salt and organic carbon aerosols, for the period 1980–2022. First, we describe the detection algorithm, discuss its sensitivity, and evaluate its validity. Then, we present several extreme transport case studies, in the Arctic and in the Antarctic, illustrating the complementarity between ARs and p‐AARs. Despite similarities in transport pathways during co‐occurring AR/p‐AAR events, vertical profiles differ depending on the species, and large‐scale transport patterns show that moisture and aerosols do not necessarily originate from the same areas. The complementarity between AR and p‐AAR is also evidenced by their long‐term characteristics in terms of spatial distribution, seasonality and trends. p‐AAR detection, as a complement to AR, can have several important applications for better understanding polar climate and its connections to the mid‐latitudes.

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“…Variations in the frequency of weather systems further contribute to the formation of extremes on a seasonal timescale (Hartmuth et al., 2022; Papritz, 2020), however their role for Arctic interannual temperature and precipitation variability in a changing climate has only received little attention so far. Several climate models project changes in Arctic weather system frequencies and characteristics such as their intensity and intensification in a warmer climate (Akperov et al., 2019; Rinke et al., 2017; You et al., 2022), with possibly large implications for future T and P variability. We show seasonal‐mean changes in weather system frequencies in CESM1 in Figure S7 in Supporting Information .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arctic Seasonal Variability and Extremes, and the Role of Weather Systems in a Changing Climate

Hartmuth

Papritz

Boettcher

et al. 2023

Geophysical Research Letters

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The effects of global warming are strongly amplified in the Arctic, causing rapidly rising temperatures and ongoing dramatic loss of sea ice, which itself is subject to large interannual variability. We investigate changes in seasonal‐mean temperature and precipitation, its variability and extremes, using large‐ensemble climate model data with a representative concentration pathway 8.5 forcing scenario for historical (S2000) and end‐of‐century projections (S2100). Our results reveal regionally and seasonally dependent changes in Arctic interannual temperature and precipitation variability that are strongly linked to sea‐ice loss. We show a doubling in precipitation variability over the Arctic Ocean and a significant reduction in temperature variability in the Barents Sea. Extremely warm seasons in S2000 rank among the coldest seasons or become unrealistic in S2100. We further show the key role of large‐scale weather systems for shaping seasonal temperature and precipitation extremes in the Arctic which persists under climate warming.

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The Role of Atmospheric Blocking in Regulating Arctic Warming

Cited by 14 publications

References 51 publications

Unprecedented fire activity above the Arctic Circle linked to rising temperatures

Unprecedented fire activity above the Arctic Circle linked to rising temperatures

Polar Aerosol Atmospheric Rivers: Detection, Characteristics, and Potential Applications

Arctic Seasonal Variability and Extremes, and the Role of Weather Systems in a Changing Climate

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