Description: During the Middle Miocene climate transition about 14 million years ago, the Antarctic ice sheet expanded to near-modern volume. Surprisingly, this ice sheet growth was accompanied by a warming in the surface waters of the Southern Ocean, whereas a slight deep-water temperature increase was delayed by more than 200 thousand years. Here we use a coupled atmosphere–ocean model to assess the relative effects of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration and ice sheet growth on regional and global temperatures. In the simulations, changes in the wind field associated with the growth of the ice sheet induce changes in ocean circulation, deep-water formation and sea-ice cover that result in sea surface warming and deep-water cooling in large swaths of the Atlantic and Indian ocean sectors of the Southern Ocean. We interpret these changes as the dominant ocean surface response to a 100-thousand-year phase of massive ice growth in Antarctica. A rise in global annual mean temperatures is also seen in response to increased Antarctic ice surface elevation. In contrast, the longer-term surface and deep-water temperature trends are dominated by changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration. We therefore conclude that the climatic and oceanographic impacts of the Miocene expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet are governed by a complex interplay between wind field, ocean circulation and the sea-ice system.

Description: During glacial periods of the Late Pleistocene, an abundance of proxy data demonstrates the existence of large and repeated millennial-scale warming episodes, known as Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO) events1. This ubiquitous feature of rapid glacial climate change can be extended back as far as 800,000 years before present (BP) in the ice core record2, and has drawn broad attention within the science and policy-making communities alike3. Many studies have been dedicated to investigating the underlying causes of these changes, but no coherent mechanism has yet been identified3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Here we show, by using a comprehensive fully coupled model16, that gradual changes in the height of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets (NHISs) can alter the coupled atmosphere–ocean system and cause rapid glacial climate shifts closely resembling DO events. The simulated global climate responses—including abrupt warming in the North Atlantic, a northward shift of the tropical rainbelts, and Southern Hemisphere cooling related to the bipolar seesaw—are generally consistent with empirical evidence1, 3, 17. As a result of the coexistence of two glacial ocean circulation states at intermediate heights of the ice sheets, minor changes in the height of the NHISs and the amount of atmospheric CO2 can trigger the rapid climate transitions via a local positive atmosphere–ocean–sea-ice feedback in the North Atlantic. Our results, although based on a single model, thus provide a coherent concept for understanding the recorded millennial-scale variability and abrupt climate changes in the coupled atmosphere–ocean system, as well as their linkages to the volume of the intermediate ice sheets during glacials.

Description: Recent global warming is pronounced in high-latitude regions (e.g. northern Asia), and will cause the vegetation to change. Future vegetation trends (e.g. the “arctic greening”) will feed back into atmospheric circulation and the global climate system. Understanding the nature and causes of past vegetation changes is important for predicting the composition and distribution of future vegetation communities. Fossil pollen records from 468 sites in northern and eastern Asia were biomised at selected times between 40 cal ka bp and today. Biomes were also simulated using a climate-driven biome model and results from the two approaches compared in order to help understand the mechanisms behind the observed vegetation changes. The consistent biome results inferred by both approaches reveal that long-term and broad-scale vegetation patterns reflect global to hemispheric-scale climate changes. Forest biomes increase around the beginning of the late deglaciation, become more widespread during the early and middle Holocene, and decrease in the late Holocene in fringe areas of the Asian Summer Monsoon. At the southern and southwestern margins of the taiga, forest increases in the early Holocene and shows notable species succession, which may have been caused by winter warming at ca. 7 cal ka bp. At the northeastern taiga margin (central Yakutia and northeastern Siberia), shrub expansion during the last deglaciation appears to prevent the permafrost from thawing and hinders the northward expansion of evergreen needle-leaved species until ca. 7 cal ka bp. The vegetation climate disequilibrium during the early Holocene in the taiga-tundra transition zone suggests that projected climate warming will not cause a northward expansion of evergreen needle-leaved species.

Description: Understanding how the Antarctic ice sheet will respond to global warming relies on knowledge of how it has behaved in the past. The use of numerical models, the only means to quantitatively predict the future, is hindered by limitations to topographic data both now and in the past, and in knowledge of how subsurface oceanic, glaciological and hydrological processes interact. Incorporating the variety and interplay of such processes, operating at multiple spatio-temporal scales, is critical to modeling the Antarctic’s system evolution and requires direct observations in challenging locations. As these processes do not observe disciplinary boundaries neither should our future research.

Description: Teleconnections refer to links between regions that are distant to each other, but nevertheless exhibit some relation. The study of such teleconnections is a well-known task in climate research. Climate simulation shall model known teleconnections. Detecting teleconnections in climate simulations is a crucial aspect in judging the quality of the simulation output. It is common practice to run scripts to execute a sequence of analysis steps on the climate simulations to search for teleconnections. Such a scripting approach is not flexible and targeted towards one specific goal. It is desirable to have one tool that allows for a flexible analysis of all teleconnection patterns with a dataset. We present such a tool, where the extracted information is provided in an intuitive visual form to users, who then can interactively explore the data. We developed an analysis workflow that is modeled around four views showing different facets of the data with coordinated interaction. We present a teleconnection study with simulation ensembles and reanalysis data obtained by data assimilation to observe how well the teleconnectivity patterns match and to demonstrate the effectiveness of our tool.

Description: Geological evidence indicates large continental‐scale Antarctic ice volume variations during the early and mid‐Miocene. On million‐year timescales, these variations can largely be explained by equilibrium Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) simulations. In contrast, on shorter orbital timescales, the AIS needs not be in equilibrium with the forcing and ice volume variations may be substantially different. Here, we introduce a conceptual model, based on ice dynamical model results, to investigate the difference between transient variability and equilibrium differences of the Miocene AIS. In our model, an ice sheet will grow (shrink) by a specific rate when it is smaller (larger) than its equilibrium size. We show that phases of concurrent ice volume increase and rising CO2 levels are possible, even though the equilibrium ice volume decreases monotonically with CO2. When the AIS volume is out of equilibrium with the forcing climate, the ice sheet can still be adapting to a relatively large equilibrium size, although CO2 is rising after a phase of decrease. A delayed response of Antarctic ice volume to (covarying) solar insolation and CO2 concentrations can cause discrepancies between Miocene solar insolation and benthic δ18O variability. Increasing forcing frequency leads to a larger disequilibrium and consequently larger CO2‐ice volume phase differences. Furthermore, an amplified forcing amplitude causes larger amplitude ice volume variability, because the growth and decay rates depend on the forcing. It also leads to a reduced average ice volume, resulting from the growth rates generally being smaller than the decay rates.

Description: An abundance of evidence indicates that the tropics are expanding. Despite many attempts to decipher the cause, the underlying dynamical mechanism driving tropical expansion is still not entirely clear. Here, based on observations, multimodel simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) and purposefully designed numerical experiments, the variations and trends of the tropical width are explored from a regional perspective. We find that the width of the tropics closely follows the displacement of oceanic midlatitude meridional temperature gradients (MMTG). Under global warming, as a first‐order response, the subtropical ocean experiences more surface warming because of the mean Ekman convergence of anomalously warm water. The enhanced subtropical warming, which is partially independent of natural climate oscillations, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, leads to poleward advance of the MMTG and drives the tropical expansion. Our results, supported by both observations and model simulations, imply that global warming may have already significantly contributed to the ongoing tropical expansion, especially over the ocean‐dominant Southern Hemisphere.

Description: Tree-ring maximum latewood density (MXD) records from Fennoscandia have been widely used to infer regional- and hemispheric-scale mean temperature variability. Here, we explore if MXD records can also be used to infer past variability of summer temperature extremes across Fennoscandia. The first principal component (PC1) based on 34 MXD chronologies in Fennoscandia explains 50% of the total variance in the observed warm-day extremes over the period 1901–1978. Variations in both observed summer warm-day extremes and PC1 are influenced by the frequency of anomalous anticyclonic pattern over the region, summer sea surface temperatures over the Baltic, North and Norwegian Seas, and the strength of the westerly zonal wind at 200 hPa across Fennoscandia. Both time series are associated with nearly identical atmospheric circulation and SST patterns according to composite map analysis. In a longer context, the first PC based on 3 millennium-long MXD chronologies in central and northern Fennoscandia explains 83% of the total variance of PC1 from the 34 MXD chronologies over the period 1901–1978, 48% of the total variance of the summer warm-day extreme variability over the period 1901–2006, and 36% of the total variance in the frequency of a summer anticyclonic pattern centered over eastern-central Fennoscandia in the period 1948–2006. The frequency of summer warm-day extremes in Fennoscandia is likely linked to a meridional shift of the northern mid-latitude jet stream. This study shows that the MXD network can be used to infer the variability of past summer warm-day extremes and the frequency of the associated summer anticyclonic circulation pattern over Fennoscandia.

Description: Interannual to decadal variability of European summer drought and its relationship with global sea surface temperature (SST) is investigated using the newly developed self calibrated Palmer drought severity index (scPDSI) and global sea surface temperature (SST) field for the period 1901–2002. A European drought severity index defined as the average of scPDSI over entire Europe shows quasiperiodic variations in the 2.5–5 year band as well as at 12–13 years suggesting a possible potential predictability of averaged drought conditions over Europe. A Canonical Correlation Analysis between summer scPDSI anomalies over Europe and global SST anomalies reveals the existence of three modes of coupled summer drought scPDSI patterns and winter global SST anomalies. The first scPDSI-SST coupled mode represents the long-term trends in the data which manifest in SST as warming over all oceans. The associated long-term trend in scPDSI suggests increasing drought conditions over the central part of Europe. The second mode is related to the inter-annual ENSO and decadal PDO influence on the European climate and the third one captures mainly the drought pattern associated to Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. The lag relationships between winter SST and summer drought conditions established in this study can provide a valuable skill for the prediction of drought conditions over Europe on interannual to decadal time scales.

Description: The mid-Piacenzian climate represents the most geologically recent interval of long-term average warmth relative to the last million years, and shares similarities with the climate projected for the end of the 21st century. As such, it represents a natural experiment from which we can gain insight into potential climate change impacts, enabling more informed policy decisions for mitigation and adaptation. Here, we present the first systematic comparison of Pliocene sea surface temperature (SST) between an ensemble of eight climate model simulations produced as part of PlioMIP (Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project) with the PRISM (Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping) Project mean annual SST field. Our results highlight key regional and dynamic situations where there is discord between the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and the climate model simulations. These differences have led to improved strategies for both experimental design and temporal refinement of the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction.