The recent warming trend in North Greenland

[en] The Arctic is among the fastest warming regions on Earth, but it is also one with limited spatial coverage of multi-decadal instrumental surface air temperature measurements. Consequently, atmospheric reanalyses are relatively unconstrained in this region, resulting in a large spread of estimated 30-year recent warming trends, which limits their use to investigate the mechanisms responsible for this trend. Here, we present a surface temperature reconstruction over 1982-2011 at NEEM (51∘ W, 77∘ N), in North Greenland, based on the inversion of borehole temperature and inert gas isotope data. We find that NEEM has warmed by 2.7±0.33∘C over the past 30 years, from the long-term 1900-1970 average of -28.55±0.29∘C. The warming trend is principally caused by an increase in downward longwave heat flux. Atmospheric reanalyses underestimate this trend by 17%, underlining the need for more in situ observations to validate reanalyses.

Disciplines :

Earth sciences & physical geography

Author, co-author :

Orsi, A.

Kawamura, K.

Masson-Delmotte, V.

Fettweis, Xavier ; Université de Liège > Département de géographie > Climatologie et Topoclimatologie

Box, J.

Dahl-Jensen, D.

Clow, G.

Landais, A.

Severinghaus, J.

Language :

English

Title :

The recent warming trend in North Greenland

Publication date :

18 April 2017

Journal title :

Geophysical Research Letters

ISSN :

0094-8276

eISSN :

1944-8007

Publisher :

American Geophysical Union, Washington, United States - District of Columbia

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Tags :

CÉCI : Consortium des Équipements de Calcul Intensif

Additional URL :

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL072212/abstract

Available on ORBi :

since 18 April 2017

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