HR: 14:15h
AN: GC52A-03    [PDF]
TI: Melting Arctic Sea Ice Dries the American West
AU: * Sewall, J O
EM: jsewall@es.ucsc.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences University of California Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
AU: Sloan, L C
EM: lcsloan@es.ucsc.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences University of California Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
AB: Over the last century, Arctic sea ice cover has decreased dramatically and many researchers expect that future greenhouse warming will exacerbate this trend. The prospect of a warmer Arctic with less ice raises many environmental and economic questions, one of which is: How will reduced Arctic ice cover effect extrapolar climates? Using the fully coupled NCAR CCSM we completed a multi-century simulation of global climate responses to reduced Arctic sea ice cover. While the global average climate response is muted, regional responses to the imposed forcing are significant. One of the more striking regional responses is a shift in storm tracks that drives a 50-100% increase in annual evaporation minus precipitation over the American West, a region where limited water resources are already a significant problem. This result highlights two well-known aspects of climate change: (1) relatively small global changes can be composed of significant regional changes and (2) changes in one region can have a large impact on distant locations. Both of these facts will become increasingly important as researchers and policy makers attempt to untangle the looming thicket of climate change impacts and feedbacks.
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (3309)
DE: 1655 Water cycles (1836)
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects
DE: 1812 Drought
DE: 1854 Precipitation (3354)
SC: Global Climate Change [GC]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting