Beschreibung: Precipitation changes are a key driver of climate change impacts. On average, global precipitation is expected to increase with warming. However, model projections show that precipitation does not scale linearly with surface air temperature. Instead, global hydrological sensitivity, the relative change of global-mean precipitation per degree of global warming, seems to vary across different scenarios and even with time. Based on output from 20 coupled Atmosphere-Ocean-General-Circulation-Models for up to 7 different scenarios, we discuss to what extent these variations can be explained by changes in the tropospheric energy budget. Our analysis supports earlier findings that long- and shortwave absorbers initially decrease global-mean precipitation. Including these absorbers into a multivariate scaling approach allows to closely reproduce the simulated global-mean precipitation changes. We find a sensitivity of global-mean precipitation to tropospheric greenhouse gas forcing of −0.42 ± 0.23%/(W/m2) (uncertainty given as one std of inter-model variability) and to black carbon emissions of −0.07 ± 0.02%/(Mt/yr). In combination with these two predictors the dominant longer-term effect of surface air temperatures on precipitation is estimated to be 2.2 ± 0.52%/K – much lower than the 6.5%/K that may be expected from the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship.

Beschreibung: Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans 124(6), (2019): 3490-3507, doi:10.1029/2018JC014675.

Beschreibung: Offshore permafrost plays a role in the global climate system, but observations of permafrost thickness, state, and composition are limited to specific regions. The current global permafrost map shows potential offshore permafrost distribution based on bathymetry and global sea level rise. As a first‐order estimate, we employ a heat transfer model to calculate the subsurface temperature field. Our model uses dynamic upper boundary conditions that synthesize Earth System Model air temperature, ice mass distribution and thickness, and global sea level reconstruction and applies globally distributed geothermal heat flux as a lower boundary condition. Sea level reconstruction accounts for differences between marine and terrestrial sedimentation history. Sediment composition and pore water salinity are integrated in the model. Model runs for 450 ka for cross‐shelf transects were used to initialize the model for circumarctic modeling for the past 50 ka. Preindustrial submarine permafrost (i.e., cryotic sediment), modeled at 12.5‐km spatial resolution, lies beneath almost 2.5 ×106km2 of the Arctic shelf. Our simple modeling approach results in estimates of distribution of cryotic sediment that are similar to the current global map and recent seismically delineated permafrost distributions for the Beaufort and Kara seas, suggesting that sea level is a first‐order determinant for submarine permafrost distribution. Ice content and sediment thermal conductivity are also important for determining rates of permafrost thickness change. The model provides a consistent circumarctic approach to map submarine permafrost and to estimate the dynamics of permafrost in the past.

Beschreibung: Boundary condition data are available online via the sources referenced in the manuscript. This work was partially funded by a Helmholtz Association of Research Centres (HGF) Joint Russian‐German Research Group (HGF JRG 100). This study is part of a project that has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement 773421. Submarine permafrost studies in the Kara and Laptev Seas were supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR/RFFI) grants 18‐05‐60004 and 18‐05‐70091, respectively. The International Permafrost Association (IPA) and the Association for Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) supported research coordination that led to this study. We acknowledge coordination support of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) through their core project on Climate and Cryosphere (CliC). Thanks to Martin Jakobsson for providing a digitized version of the preliminary IHO delineation of the Arctic seas and to Guy Masters for access to the observational geothermal database. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Beschreibung: 2019-10-17

Beschreibung: © The Author(s), 2013. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Climate of the Past 9 (2013): 1111-1140, doi:10.5194/cp-9-1111-2013.

Beschreibung: Both historical and idealized climate model experiments are performed with a variety of Earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMICs) as part of a community contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report. Historical simulations start at 850 CE and continue through to 2005. The standard simulations include changes in forcing from solar luminosity, Earth's orbital configuration, CO2, additional greenhouse gases, land use, and sulphate and volcanic aerosols. In spite of very different modelled pre-industrial global surface air temperatures, overall 20th century trends in surface air temperature and carbon uptake are reasonably well simulated when compared to observed trends. Land carbon fluxes show much more variation between models than ocean carbon fluxes, and recent land fluxes appear to be slightly underestimated. It is possible that recent modelled climate trends or climate–carbon feedbacks are overestimated resulting in too much land carbon loss or that carbon uptake due to CO2 and/or nitrogen fertilization is underestimated. Several one thousand year long, idealized, 2 × and 4 × CO2 experiments are used to quantify standard model characteristics, including transient and equilibrium climate sensitivities, and climate–carbon feedbacks. The values from EMICs generally fall within the range given by general circulation models. Seven additional historical simulations, each including a single specified forcing, are used to assess the contributions of different climate forcings to the overall climate and carbon cycle response. The response of surface air temperature is the linear sum of the individual forcings, while the carbon cycle response shows a non-linear interaction between land-use change and CO2 forcings for some models. Finally, the preindustrial portions of the last millennium simulations are used to assess historical model carbon-climate feedbacks. Given the specified forcing, there is a tendency for the EMICs to underestimate the drop in surface air temperature and CO2 between the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age estimated from palaeoclimate reconstructions. This in turn could be a result of unforced variability within the climate system, uncertainty in the reconstructions of temperature and CO2, errors in the reconstructions of forcing used to drive the models, or the incomplete representation of certain processes within the models. Given the forcing datasets used in this study, the models calculate significant land-use emissions over the pre-industrial period. This implies that land-use emissions might need to be taken into account, when making estimates of climate–carbon feedbacks from palaeoclimate reconstructions.

Beschreibung: Infrastructure built on perennially frozen ice-rich ground relies heavily on thermally stable subsurface conditions. Climate-warming-induced deepening of ground thaw puts such infrastructure at risk of failure. For better assessing the risk of large-scale future damage to Arctic infrastructure, improved strategies for model-based approaches are urgently needed. We used the laterally coupled 1D heat conduction model CryoGrid3 to simulate permafrost degradation affected by linear infrastructure.We present a case study of a gravel road built on continuous permafrost (Dalton highway, Alaska) and forced our model under historical and strong future warming conditions (following the RCP8.5 scenario). As expected, the presence of a gravel road in the model leads to higher net heat flux entering the ground compared to a reference run without infrastructure and thus a higher rate of thaw. Further, our results suggest that road failure is likely a consequence of lateral destabilisation due to talik formation in the ground beside the road rather than a direct consequence of a top-down thawing and deepening of the active layer below the road centre. In line with previous studies, we identify enhanced snow accumulation and ponding (both a consequence of infrastructure presence) as key factors for increased soil temperatures and road degradation. Using differing horizontal model resolutions we show that it is possible to capture these key factors and their impact on thawing dynamics with a low number of lateral model units, underlining the potential of our model approach for use in pan-Arctic risk assessments. Our results suggest a general two-phase behaviour of permafrost degradation: an initial phase of slow and gradual thaw, followed by a strong increase in thawing rates after the exceedance of a critical ground warming. The timing of this transition and the magnitude of thaw rate acceleration differ strongly between undisturbed tundra and infrastructure-affected permafrost ground. Our model results suggest that current model-based approaches which do not explicitly take into account infrastructure in their designs are likely to strongly underestimate the timing of future Arctic infrastructure failure.

Beschreibung: Subsea permafrost carbon pools below the Arctic shelf seas are a major unknown in the global carbon cycle. We combine a numerical model of sedimentation and permafrost evolution with simplified carbon turnover to estimate accumulation and microbial decomposition of organic matter on the pan-Arctic shelf over the past four glacial cycles. We find that Arctic shelf permafrost is a globally important long-term carbon sink storing 2822 (1518–4982) Pg OC, double the amount stored in lowland permafrost. Although currently thawing, prior microbial decomposition and organic matter aging limit decomposition rates to less than 48 Tg OC/yr (25–85) constraining emissions due to thaw and suggesting that the large permafrost shelf carbon pool is largely insensitive to thaw. We identify an urgent need to reduce uncertainty in rates of microbial decomposition of organic matter in cold and saline subaquatic environments. Large emissions of methane more likely derive from older and deeper sources than from organic matter in thawing permafrost.