Observed and Modeled Relationships among Arctic Climate
Variables
Yonghua Chen, James R. Miller, Jennifer A. Francis, Gary L. Russell,
and Filipe Aires
2003: Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres), 108
(D24), ACL 17, doi:10.1029/2003JD003824
Abstract
The complex interactions among climate variables in the Arctic have
important implications for potential climate change, both globally and
locally. Because the Arctic is a data-sparse region and because global
climate models (GCMs) often represent Arctic climate variables poorly,
significant uncertainties remain in our understanding of these
processes. In addition to the traditional appraoch of validating
individual variables with observed fields, we demonstrate that a
comparison of covariances among interrelated parmaeters from
observations and GCM output provides a tool to evaluate the realism of
modeled relationships between variables. We analyze and compare a
combination of conventional observations, satellite retrievals, and GCM
simulations to examine some of these relationships. The three climate
variables considered in this study are surface temperature, cloud
cover, and downward longwave flux, particularly in winter. There is
less variability in GCM output, in part, because there is greater
spatial averaging. Although the satellite products can be used to
examine some of these relationships, additional work may be needed to
ensure consistency between changes in radiative components of the
energy budget and other retrieved quantities. The GCM's relationships
among variables agree well with in situ observations, which provides
some confidence that the GCM's representation of present-day climate
is reasonable in high northern latitudes.
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