Changing Climate Sensitivity in Response to Forest-Tundra Snow Albedo Feedback during the mid to late Pliocene Cooling

Abstract:

The forest-tundra snow albedo feedback is an important feedback in Earth's climate system, especially due to its potential role in modulating glacial cycles. Until now, little research has been done on how the strength of this feedback might vary with the background climate state. Over the last 4 million years, I hypothesize that the feedback has been generally weaker under warm Northern Hemispheric conditions when tundra has been primarily confined to the high Arctic and forest has extended to most of the Arctic coastline than under cooler Northern Hemispheric conditions in which the forest-tundra boundary has generally lain to the south, extending across the interiors of the large continental land masses. To test the hypothesis of the weakened/strengthened feedback, I used an Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity that consists of a dynamic terrestrial vegetation model coupled to a climate model. A set of time-slice experiments with different orbital and greenhouse gas concentrations were analyzed. In one set of experiments, the feedback gain with respect to annual average top-of-atmosphere net short wave radiation due to vegetation was 1.42 for modern conditions but only 1.14 for the mid-Pliocene. Additionally, we compared experiments with different shortwave-radiation parameterizations, which differed in the amount of shortwave energy flux reaching the surface (and subsequently affecting vegetative biomass). These techniques allowed us to isolate the mechanisms responsible for the varying strength of the forest-tundra snow albedo feedback. The results also show that many factors affect the strength of feedback. In this presentation I will concentrate on the availability of land for conversion of forest to tundra (and vice versa), cloud cover near the forest-tundra boundary, and the integrated surface insolation contrast between tundra and forest during the snow-covered season.