Winter climate change in the Arctic for the mid-Holocene and last glacial maximum from PMIP2 coupled simulations

Abstract

The winter climate change for the mid-Holocene occurred at 6000 years before present (6k BP) and Last Glacial Maximum at 21,000 years before present (21k BP) serve a good opportunity to investigate the Arctic climate change because the climate was colder than present and the proxy evidence is relatively abundant. We aim at investigating the change in the Arctic climate change in winter for the mid-Holocene, Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) compared to preindustrial period using data from the second phase of Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project (PMIP2). In the mid-Holocene, the surface temperature decreases by less than several degrees over the subarctic regions, especially over Siberia and over Canada, whereas a slight warming is simulated over the Arctic. The warming is especially pronounced over the Greenland and Labrador Seas. The mid-Holocene winter cooling ranges from about 0.1℃ to about 0.7℃. In the LGM, surface temperature reduction is much more substantial by more than 30℃ than the mid-Holocene. The surface cooling is marked over the Laurentide and Fennoscandian ice sheets over North America and northern Europe, respectively