Uncertainty in Arctic Surface Fluxes and Their Influence on the Global Ocean

Abstract:

Current generation climate models exhibit substantial spread in their representation of Arctic atmosphere-ocean fluxes. Here, we compare Arctic surface fluxes in CMIP5 models and reanalysis products. We focus in particular on freshwater fluxes around Greenland, and the magnitude of observed and projected changes in ice sheet mass balance relative to those in precipitation and evaporation. This information is used to infer the time and spatial scales over which uncertainty in freshwater flux from the Greenland ice sheet is meaningful from a large-scale oceanographic perspective.

We intend to examine the influence of this spread on ocean heat content around Greenland using numerical simulations conducted with a common ocean model. Although our initial analysis will highlight near-Greenland ocean heat content, these simulations might be used to examine the mechanisms by which this surface forcing propagates to other oceanic quantities and/or regions. This presentation is thus also intended to solicit desired diagnostic outputs and additional perturbation experiments that would be of use to the Arctic system and wider scientific communities.