Summertime changes in climate extremes over the peripheral Arctic regions after a sudden sea ice retreat

Abstract

The retreat of Arctic sea ice is frequently considered to be a possible driver of changes in climate extremes in the Arctic and possibly down to mid-latitudes. However, it remains unclear how the atmosphere will respond to a near-total retreat of summer Arctic sea ice, a reality that might occur in the foreseeable future. This study explores this question by conducting sensitivity experiments with two global coupled climate models run at two different horizontal resolutions to investigate the change in temperature and precipitation extremes during summer over peripheral Arctic regions following a sudden reduction in summer Arctic sea ice cover. An increase in frequency and persistence of maximum surface air temperature is found in all peripheral Arctic regions during the summer, when sea ice loss occurs. For each 1×106 km2 of Arctic sea ice extent reduction, the absolute frequency of days exceeding the surface air temperature of the climatological 90th percentile increases by ∼ 4 % over the Svalbard area, and the duration of warm spells increases by ∼ 1 d per month over the same region. Furthermore, we find that the 10th percentile of surface daily air temperature increases more than the 90th percentile, leading to a weakened diurnal cycle of surface air temperature. Finally, an increase in extreme precipitation, which is less robust than the increase in extreme temperatures, is found in all regions in summer. These findings suggest that a sudden retreat of summer Arctic sea ice clearly impacts the extremes in maximum surface air temperature and precipitation over the peripheral Arctic regions with the largest influence over inhabited islands such as Svalbard or northern Canada. Nonetheless, even with a large sea ice reduction in regions close to the North Pole, the local precipitation response is relatively small compared to internal climate variability.