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Orbital forcing of Arctic climate: mechanisms of climate response and implications for continental glaciation

Climate Dynamics volume 21, pages 539–557 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Progress in understanding how terrestrial ice volume is linked to Earth’s orbital configuration has been impeded by the cost of simulating climate system processes relevant to glaciation over orbital time scales (103–105 years). A compromise is usually made to represent the climate system by models that are averaged over one or more spatial dimensions or by three-dimensional models that are limited to simulating particular “snapshots” in time. We take advantage of the short equilibration time (∼10 years) of a climate model consisting of a three-dimensional atmosphere coupled to a simple slab ocean to derive the equilibrium climate response to accelerated variations in Earth’s orbital configuration over the past 165,000 years. Prominent decreases in ice melt and increases in snowfall are simulated during three time intervals near 26, 73, and 117 thousand years ago (ka) when aphelion was in late spring and obliquity was low. There were also significant decreases in ice melt and increases in snowfall near 97 and 142 ka when eccentricity was relatively large, aphelion was in late spring, and obliquity was high or near its long term mean. These “glaciation-friendly” time intervals correspond to prominent and secondary phases of terrestrial ice growth seen within the marine δ18O record. Both dynamical and thermal effects contribute to the increases in snowfall during these periods, through increases in storm activity and the fraction of precipitation falling as snow. The majority of the mid- to high latitude response to orbital forcing is organized by the properties of sea ice, through its influence on radiative feedbacks that nearly double the size of the orbital forcing as well as its influence on the seasonal evolution of the latitudinal temperature gradient.

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Author notes

  1. C. S. Jackson

    Present address: Institute for Geophysics, The John A. and Katherine G. Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 4412 Spicewood Springs Rd., Bldg 600, Austin, TX 78759, USA

  2. A. J. Broccoli

    Present address: Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA

    C. S. Jackson

  2. NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA

    A. J. Broccoli

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  1. C. S. Jackson
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Correspondence to C. S. Jackson.

Appendix

Appendix

Energy is transported to the poles in the form of sensible heat, potential energy, latent heat, and kinetic energy. Because poleward transport of kinetic energy is a small fraction of the total transport we do not include it within our calculations. Given monthly means, one may mathematically calculate energy transported by SE, the MMC, and by all circulations (Total = SE + MMC + TE). Because daily information from the model was not saved, we needed to determine TE as a residual (TE = Total – SE – MMC). This calculation of TE is particularly sensitive to small errors which we have minimized by two means. Firstly we saved monthly means of the triple product of surface pressure, meridional wind velocity and each of the quantities pertaining to air temperature, geopotential height, and specific humidity at every model level as well as the covariance of the meridional wind and surface pressure. Neglecting the time variation of surface pressure from this calculation can seriously undermine the fidelity of the calculation. The second way we minimize errors is by adjusting the meridional winds to yield no net exchange of mass across latitudinal circles (i.e., there are no vertically integrated meridional winds, Hall et al. 1994). Although there can be a true mass flux associated with changes in surface pressure, these fluxes are smaller than the errors introduced by not enforcing this constraint (Masuda 1988). We adjust the meridional winds by the monthly mean of the vertical integral of the covariance between meridional winds and surface pressure. The accuracy of the heat transport calculation can be tested by a comparison between the heat transport calculated directly from the appropriate quantities from the model integration and the heat transport as inferred from the radiative imbalance at the top-of-the-atmosphere. The two curves are both quite smooth and never differ by more than 0.1 PW.

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Jackson, C.S., Broccoli, A.J. Orbital forcing of Arctic climate: mechanisms of climate response and implications for continental glaciation. Climate Dynamics 21, 539–557 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-003-0351-3

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Keywords

  • Orbital Configuration
  • Storm Activity
  • North Atlantic Deep Water
  • Transient Eddy
  • Meridional Temperature Gradient