Stability of the Arctic Climate
The Arctic is warming rapidly. We observe that the sea ice is retreating, and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is accelerating. This project uses mathematical and statistical models to investigate if the warming will lead to abrupt changes in the climate, affecting ecosystems and societies. The level of warming where such transitions occur are referred to as tipping points in the climate system, and our goal is to assess the associated risk.
Since the last ice age, arctic climate has been very stable, but during the ice age, climate in the Arctic was characterized by repeated rapid warming and cooling events. The complex Earth system models, however, do not reproduce these rapid changes very well and may not be able to predict loss of stability of the Arctic climate under continued global warming. An alternative can be to use simple, conceptual models that describe specific processes that can lead to accelerated change. On the other hand, these simple models may disregard important balancing effects and exaggerate the risk of abrupt climate change.
Thus, both simple and complex models have limitations and weaknesses, which calls for adopting a wide range of models and methods. Our approach is to use conceptual models that are constructed and calibrated using both observational data and experiments in complex Earth system models. In the complex models, we can set up experiments specifically designed to determine which processes we need to include in the simple models. Using statistical methods, we will tune the simple models to observations and simulated climate data from complex models before using them to answer questions about the stability of the Arctic climate.
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