Polar amplification comparison among Earth’s three poles under different socioeconomic scenarios from CMIP6 surface air temperature

Abstract

Abstract The polar amplification (PA) has become the focus of climate change. However, there are seldom comparisons of amplification among Earth’s three poles of Arctic (latitude higher than 60 °N), Antarctica (Antarctic Ice Sheet) and the Third Pole (the High Mountain Asia with the elevation higher than 4000 m) under different socioeconomic scenarios. Based on CMIP6 multi-model ensemble, two types of PA index (PAI) have been defined to quantify the PA intensity and variations, and PAI1/PAI2 is defined as the ratio of the absolute value of surface air temperature linear trend over Earth’s three poles and that for global mean/over other regions except Earth’s three poles. Arctic warms fastest in winter and weakest in summer, followed by the Third Pole, and Antarctica warms least. The similar phenomenon proceeds when global warming of 1.5–2.0 °C, and 2.0–3.0 °C above pre-industrial levels. After removing the Earth’s three poles self-influence, all the PAI2s increase much more obviously relative to the PAI1s, especially the Antarctic PAI. Earth’s three poles warm faster than the other regions. With the forcing increasing, PA accelerates much more over Antarctica and the Third Pole, but becomes weaker over Arctic. This demonstrates that future warming rate might make a large difference among Earth’s three poles under different scenarios.