Atmospheric Response to Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice: The Importance of Ocean–Atmosphere Coupling and the Background State

Abstract

The atmospheric response to Arctic and Antarctic sea ice changes typical of the present day and coming decades is investigated using the Hadley Centre global climate model (HadGEM3). The response is diagnosed from ensemble simulations of the period 1979 to 2009 with observed and perturbed sea ice concentrations. The experimental design allows the impacts of ocean–atmosphere coupling and the background atmospheric state to be assessed. The modeled response can be very different to that inferred from statistical relationships, showing that the response cannot be easily diagnosed from observations. Reduced Arctic sea ice drives a local low pressure response in boreal summer and autumn. Increased Antarctic sea ice drives a poleward shift of the Southern Hemisphere midlatitude jet, especially in the cold season. Coupling enables surface temperature responses to spread to the ocean, amplifying the atmospheric response and revealing additional impacts including warming of the North Atlantic in response to reduced Arctic sea ice, with a northward shift of the Atlantic intertropical convergence zone and increased Sahel rainfall. The background state controls the sign of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) response via the refraction of planetary waves. This could help to resolve differences in previous studies, and potentially provides an “emergent constraint” to narrow the uncertainties in the NAO response, highlighting the need for future multimodel coordinated experiments.