The role of horizontal temperature advection in arctic amplification

Joseph P. Clark, Vivek Shenoy, Steven B. Feldstein, Sukyoung Lee, Michael Goss

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

The wintertime (December-February) 1990-2016 Arctic surface air temperature (SAT) trend is examined using self-organizing maps (SOMs). The high-dimensional SAT dataset is reduced into nine representative SOM patterns, with each pattern exhibiting a decorrelation time scale of about 10 days and having about 85% of its variance coming from intraseasonal time scales. The trend in the frequency of occurrence of each SOM pattern is used to estimate the interdecadal Arctic winter warming trend associated with the SOM patterns. It is found that trends in the SOM patterns explain about one-half of the SAT trend in the Barents and Kara Seas, one-third of the SAT trend around Baffin Bay, and two-thirds of the SAT trend in the Chukchi Sea. A composite calculation of each term in the thermodynamic energy equation for each SOM pattern shows that the SAT anomalies grow primarily through the advection of the climatological temperature by the anomalous wind. This implies that a substantial fraction of Arctic amplification is due to horizontal temperature advection that is driven by changes in the atmospheric circulation. An analysis of the surface energy budget indicates that the skin temperature anomalies as well as the trend, although very similar to that of the SAT, are produced primarily by downward longwave radiation.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)2957-2976
Number of pages20
JournalJournal of Climate
Volume34
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Atmospheric Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The role of horizontal temperature advection in arctic amplification'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this