Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Present and future aerosol impacts on Arctic climate change in the GISS-E2.1 Earth system model
Show others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics, ISSN 1680-7316, E-ISSN 1680-7324, Vol. 21, no 13, p. 10413-10438Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The Arctic is warming 2 to 3 times faster than the global average, partly due to changes in short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs) including aerosols. In order to study the effects of atmospheric aerosols in this warming, recent past (1990-2014) and future (2015-2050) simulations have been carried out using the GISS-E2.1 Earth system model to study the aerosol burdens and their radiative and climate impacts over the Arctic (> 60 degrees N), using anthropogenic emissions from the Eclipse V6b and the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) databases, while global annual mean greenhouse gas concentrations were prescribed and kept fixed in all simulations. Results showed that the simulations have underestimated observed surface aerosol levels, in particular black carbon (BC) and sulfate (SO42-), by more than 50 %, with the smallest biases calculated for the atmosphere-only simulations, where winds are nudged to reanalysis data. CMIP6 simulations performed slightly better in reproducing the observed surface aerosol concentrations and climate parameters, compared to the Eclipse simulations. In addition, simulations where atmosphere and ocean are fully coupled had slightly smaller biases in aerosol levels compared to atmosphere-only simulations without nudging. Arctic BC, organic aerosol (OA), and SO(4)(2-)burdens decrease significantly in all simulations by 10 %-60% following the reductions of 7 %-78% in emission projections, with the Eclipse ensemble showing larger reductions in Arctic aerosol burdens compared to the CMIP6 ensemble. For the 2030-2050 period, the Eclipse ensemble simulated a radiative forcing due to aerosol-radiation interactions (RFARI) of -0.39 +/- 0.01Wm(-2), which is -0.08Wm(-2) larger than the 1990-2010 mean forcing (-0.32Wm(-2)), of which -0.24 +/- 0.01Wm(-2) was attributed to the anthropogenic aerosols. The CMIP6 ensemble simulated a RFARI of --0.35 to -0.40Wm(-2) for the same period, which is -0.01 to -0.06Wm(-2) larger than the 1990-2010 mean forcing of 0.35Wm(-2). The scenarios with little to no mitigation (worst-case scenarios) led to very small changes in the RFARI, while scenarios with medium to large emission mitigations led to increases in the negative RFARI, mainly due to the decrease in the positive BC forcing and the decrease in the negative SO42- forcing. The anthropogenic aerosols accounted for -0.24 to -0.26Wm(-2) of the net RFARI in 2030-2050 period, in Eclipse and CMIP6 ensembles, respectively. Finally, all simulations showed an increase in the Arctic surface air temperatures throughout the simulation period. By 2050, surface air temperatures are projected to increase by 2.4 to 2.6 degrees C in the Eclipse ensemble and 1.9 to 2.6 degrees C in the CMIP6 ensemble, compared to the 1990-2010 mean. Overall, results show that even the scenarios with largest emission reductions leads to similar impact on the future Arctic surface air temperatures and sea-ice extent compared to scenarios with smaller emission reductions, implying reductions of greenhouse emissions are still necessary to mitigate climate change.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2021. Vol. 21, no 13, p. 10413-10438
National Category
Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Research subject
Climate
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:smhi:diva-6136DOI: 10.5194/acp-21-10413-2021ISI: 000672721000004OAI: oai:DiVA.org:smhi-6136DiVA, id: diva2:1582693
Available from: 2021-08-03 Created: 2021-08-03 Last updated: 2025-06-12Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

Present and future aerosol impacts on Arctic climate change in the GISS-E2.1 Earth system model(5260 kB)173 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 5260 kBChecksum SHA-512
55a4681b3c3be3ab283fa384f22aaabc341ec8a7558e95c5548056ec40f960333ca65e57247a456348a9b56517d1316b12e38bd313bedb5c7c3afee0246f2eed
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full text

Authority records

Thomas, Manu

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Im, UlasLangen, Peter L.Thomas, ManuSkov, HenrikBrandt, Jorgen
By organisation
Air quality
In the same journal
Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics
Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 174 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 394 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf