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Atmospheric circulation anomalies due to 115 kyr BP climate forcing dominated by changes in the North Pacific Ocean

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Abstract

Climate at the time of inception of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) at ~115 kyr BP is simulated with the fully coupled NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM3) and compared to a simulated preindustrial climate (circa 1870) in order to better understand land surface and atmospheric responses to orbital and greenhouse cooling at inception. The interaction between obliquity and eccentricity produces maximum decrease in TOA insolation in JJA over the Arctic but increases occur over the tropics in DJF. The land surface response is dominated by widespread summer cooling in the Northern Hemisphere (NH), increases in snowfall, and decreases in melt rates and total precipitation. CCSM3 responds to the climate forcing at 115 kyr BP by producing incipient glaciation in the areas of LIS nucleation. We find that the inception of the LIS could have occurred with atmospheric circulation patterns that differ little from the present. The location of the troughs/ridges, mean flow over the Canadian Arctic and dominant modes of the atmospheric circulation are all very similar to the present. Larger changes in mean sea level pressure occur upstream of the inception region in the North Pacific Ocean and downstream in Western Europe. In the North Pacific region, the 115 kyr BP anomalies weaken both the Pacific high and Aleutian low making NH summers look more like the PREIND winters and vice versa. The occurrence of cold JJA anomalies at 115 kyr BP favors outbreaks of cold air not in the winter as in contemporary climates but during the summer instead and reinforces the cooling from orbital and GHG reductions. Increased poleward eddy transport of heat and moisture characterizes the atmospheric response in addition to reduced total cloud cover in the Arctic.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by National Science Foundation grant OPP-0352865. We are grateful to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) for providing the technical support needed to optimize CCSM3 on the high performance computing platforms and other resources provided through the Scientific Computing Division (SCD-36091015). We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions that helped to substantially improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polar Meteorology Group, Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University, 108 Scott Hall, 1090 Carmack Road, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Francis O. Otieno & David H. Bromwich

  2. Atmospheric Sciences Program, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    David H. Bromwich

  3. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Nebraska, 221 Bessey Hall, Lincoln, NE, 68588, USA

    Robert Oglesby

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  1. Francis O. Otieno
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  2. David H. Bromwich
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  3. Robert Oglesby
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Correspondence to Francis O. Otieno.

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Contribution 1389 of Byrd Polar Research Center.

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Otieno, F.O., Bromwich, D.H. & Oglesby, R. Atmospheric circulation anomalies due to 115 kyr BP climate forcing dominated by changes in the North Pacific Ocean. Clim Dyn 38, 815–835 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-011-1138-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-011-1138-6

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