Brief communication: New perspectives on the skill of modelled sea ice trends in light of recent Antarctic sea ice loss

Abstract

Most climate models do not reproduce the 1979–2014 increase in Antarctic sea ice cover. This was a contributing factor in successive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports allocating low confidence to model projections of sea ice over the 21st century. We show that recent rapid declines bring observed sea ice area trends back into line with the models and confirm that discrepancies exist for earlier periods. This demonstrates that models exhibit different skill for different timescales and periods. We discuss possible interpretations of this linear trend assessment given the abrupt nature of recent changes and discuss the implications for future research.