Polar winter climate change: strong local effects from sea ice loss, widespread consequences from warming seas

Naakka, Tuomas; Köhler, Daniel; Nordling, Kalle; Räisänen, Petri; Lund, Marianne Tronstad; Makkonen, Risto; Merikanto, Joonas; Samset, Bjørn H.; Sinclair, Victoria A.; Thomas, Jennie L.; Ekman, Annica M. L.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-8127-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 14

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-8127-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-8127-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 14

Research article

|

30 Jul 2025

Research article |

| 30 Jul 2025

Polar winter climate change: strong local effects from sea ice loss, widespread consequences from warming seas

Tuomas Naakka, Daniel Köhler, Kalle Nordling, Petri Räisänen, Marianne Tronstad Lund, Risto Makkonen, Joonas Merikanto, Bjørn H. Samset, Victoria A. Sinclair, Jennie L. Thomas, and Annica M. L. Ekman

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-8127-2025-supplement

Data sets

Finnish Meteorological Institute Petri Räisänen https://crices-task33-output-ecearth.lake.fmi.fi/index.html

Finnish Meteorological Institute Petri Räisänen https://cricestask33-output-cesm2-monthly-means.lake.fmi.fi/index.html

Finnish Meteorological Institute Petri Räisänen https://crices-task33-outputnoresm-monthly-means.lake.fmi.fi/index.html

Finnish Meteorological Institute Petri Räisänen https://crices-task33-output-ecearth-ifs-monthly-means.lake.fmi.fi/index.html

Finnish Meteorological Institute Petri Räisänen https://crices-task33-output-openifsmonthly-means.lake.fmi.fi/index.html

CRiceS: OpenIFS-43r3 model data Daniel Köhler https://a3s.fi/CRiceS_Index/CRiceS_index.html

Global fields of meteorological and aerosol data from seven experiments with the NorESM2 model under different warming scenarios, Dataset version 1 Tuomas Naakka et al. https://doi.org/10.17043/naakka-2025-noresm2-1

CESM2 Seaice and SST experiment for crices project Kalle Nordling https://doi.org/10.11582/2024.00018

Model code and software

CESM2.2 CESM Quickstart Guide https://escomp.github.io/CESM/versions/cesm2.2/html/

NorESM2 Norwegian Earth System Model 2 https://github.com/NorESMhub/NorESM

EC-Earth3 EC-Earth https://ec-earth.org/ec-earth/ec-earth-development-portal/

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Short summary

The effects of warmer sea surface temperatures and decreasing sea ice cover on polar climates have been studied using four climate models with identical prescribed changes in sea surface temperatures and sea ice cover. The models predict similar changes in air temperature and precipitation in the polar regions in a warmer climate with less sea ice. However, the models disagree on how the atmospheric circulation, i.e. the large-scale winds, will change with warmer temperatures and less sea ice.