Atlantification in a multi-model ensemble of historical climate simulations

Atlantification is a major phenomenon associated with rapid changes in the Arctic Ocean, including anomalous sea-ice loss, warming and salinification of the near-surface, enhanced mixing and changes in the ecosystem structure. Despite anomalous transport of Atlantic water in the Barents Sea/Fram Strait region is among the recognized causes of Atlantification, this phenomenon remains poorly characterized in the context of the historical (1850-present) period, hence far from being fully understood.

In this contribution, we illustrate recent progress of the Italian funded project “ATTRACTION: Atlantification dRiven by polAr-subpolar ConnecTIONs in a changing climate” that aims at providing a historical perspective on Atlantification by integrating observational evidence over the last decades, paleo-reconstructions and numerical climate simulations. We show results from a multi-model ensemble of historical climate simulations contributing to CMIP6 and depict robust traits of the simulated Atlantification across models and realizations toward fingerprinting the phenomenon at the gateway of the Arctic Ocean and toward a robust definition of an index for its quantitative characterization.