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CMIP6 model projections leave no room for permafrost to persist in Western Siberia under the SSP5-8.5 scenario

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Abstract

The outputs of the Earth system models (ESM) provided by the sixth phase of the Coupled Models Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) reflect the current state of scientific knowledge on climate change and make it possible not only to draw conclusions about the adverse consequences of climate change but also to evaluate the certainty of such conclusions. This study is aimed to check if the CMIP6 model projections of mean annual air temperature (MAAT) allow us to make a robust conclusion about the possibility of adverse consequences of climate change in the northern part of Western Siberia. With this purpose in mind, we construct the weighted multi-model ensemble and find that it reproduces with 30% accuracy the observation-based MAAT anomalies over this region. Then, we use this weighted multi-model ensemble to predict MAAT changes and find that under the SSP5-8.5 scenario, MAAT will exceed 0 °C almost everywhere in the North of Western Siberia by the end of this century. Since permafrost occurs sporadically over the territories where MAAT is above − 2 °C, this result suggests that permafrost will not persist in Western Siberia under the SSP5-8.5 scenario.

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Data availability

The climate model outputs were obtained from https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/. The 20CRV3 data were obtained from ftp://ftp2.psl.noaa.gov/Datasets/20thC_ReanV3/Monthlies/2mSI-MO/air.2m.mon.mean.nc (support for the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project version 3 dataset is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research (BER), by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Program Office, and by the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory). The data that underly figures and the code used in calculations are available from GAA on request.

Code availability

The python code developed to produce the data that underly figures presented in this paper is available from G.A.A. This code calls climate data operators (Schulzweida 2019), which are available from https://code.mpimet.mpg.de/projects/cdo/, and the function providing a trust region algorithm for constrained minimization of multivariate scalar functions, which is available from the SciPy library, https://scipy.org/scipylib/index.html.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Maxim Arzhanov and Irina Korneva for their comments on the early draft of the manuscript and anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Funding

G.E.I. and V.A.G. acknowledge funding by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (projects 0148-2019-0007 and 0148–2019-0009).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. A.M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pyzhevsky 3, Moscow, 119017, Russia

    Georgii A. Alexandrov

  2. Yu.A. Izrael Institute of Global Climate and Ecology, Glebovskaya 20B, 107258, Moscow, Russia

    Veronika A. Ginzburg & Anna A. Romanovskaya

  3. Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Staromonetny 29, Moscow, 119017, Russia

    Veronika A. Ginzburg & Gregory E. Insarov

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  1. Georgii A. Alexandrov
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  2. Veronika A. Ginzburg
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  3. Gregory E. Insarov
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Contributions

The idea of the study was conceived by G.A.A., V.A.G., G.E.I., and A.A.R. G.A.A. did calculations and drafted the manuscript. G.E.I. revised the first draft. The second draft was revised by A.A.R. and V.A.G. All authors approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Georgii A. Alexandrov.

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Alexandrov, G.A., Ginzburg, V.A., Insarov, G.E. et al. CMIP6 model projections leave no room for permafrost to persist in Western Siberia under the SSP5-8.5 scenario. Climatic Change 169, 42 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03292-w

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