'Climate Response Functions' for the Arctic Ocean: a proposedcoordinated modeling experiment
A coordinated set of Arctic modelling experiments, which explore how the Arctic responds to changes in external forcing, is proposed. Our goal is to compute and compare “climate response functions” (CRFs) – the transient response of key observable indicators such as sea-ice extent, freshwater c...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
Copernicus GmbH
2018
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/115217 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9230-3591 |
| Summary: | A coordinated set of Arctic modelling experiments,
which explore how the Arctic responds to changes
in external forcing, is proposed. Our goal is to compute and
compare “climate response functions” (CRFs) – the transient
response of key observable indicators such as sea-ice extent,
freshwater content of the Beaufort Gyre, etc. – to abrupt
“step” changes in forcing fields across a number of Arctic
models. Changes in wind, freshwater sources, and inflows to
the Arctic basin are considered. Convolutions of known or
postulated time series of these forcing fields with their respective
CRFs then yield the (linear) response of these observables.
This allows the project to inform, and interface
directly with, Arctic observations and observers and the climate
change community. Here we outline the rationale behind
such experiments and illustrate our approach in the context
of a coarse-resolution model of the Arctic based on the
MITgcm. We conclude by summarizing the expected benefits
of such an activity and encourage other modelling groups
to compute CRFs with their own models so that we might begin
to document their robustness to model formulation, resolution,
and parameterization. |
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