Please note that this session was withdrawn and is no longer available in the respective programme. This withdrawal might have been the result of a merge with another session.
CL4.4 | High-latitude climate dynamics, modelling, attribution, and impacts
High-latitude climate dynamics, modelling, attribution, and impacts
Convener: Neven-Stjepan Fuckar | Co-conveners: Torben Koenigk, Richard Bintanja, Rune Grand Graversen
Arctic and Antarctic climate domains have experienced significant changes over the modern observational era. The polar and subpolar climates of both hemispheres are crucial for the Earth’s energy and water budget, and their variability and change can have very detrimental socio-economic and ecological impacts. Thus, understanding variability and change in observations and models, and improving predictions and projections - including local and non-local impacts - of high-latitude climate is highly important for our expanding global society. Long-term variability in ocean and sea ice are the largest sources for predictability in high latitudes. Even the state-of-the-art climate models are not yet in the position to provide us with highly accurate predictions of the polar climate. Main reasons for this are the lack of observations in high latitudes, insufficient initialization methods and shortcomings of climate models in representing some of the important climate processes in high latitudes.

This session aims to advance understanding and representation of the mechanisms that control high latitude variability and predictability of climate in both hemispheres from sub-seasonal to multi-decadal timescales as well as past, recent and future long-term climates. Furthermore, the session aims to discuss ongoing efforts to improve climate predictions at high latitudes at various time scales (e.g., usage of additional observations for initialization, improved initialization methods, improved parameterizations, novel verification approaches, etc.) and potential teleconnections of high latitude climate with lower latitude climate. Additionally, of particular interests are high-resolution modelling endeavours, exploration of feedbacks and tipping points, attribution analyses, and studies of long-term polar climate change across the whole spectrum of possible future emission scenarios as well as the question of what analogues past warm climates can teach us about future polar climate We also aim to link polar climate variability, change, predictions and projections to potential ecological and socio-economic impacts and encourage submissions on such topics.