Past perspectives on the present era of abrupt Arctic climate change

Abstract

Abrupt climate change is a striking feature of many climate records, particularly the warming events in Greenland ice cores. These abrupt and high-amplitude events were tightly coupled to rapid sea-ice retreat in the North Atlantic and Nordic Seas, and observational evidence shows they had global repercussions. In the present-day Arctic, sea-ice loss is also key to ongoing warming. This Perspective uses observations and climate models to place contemporary Arctic change into the context of past abrupt Greenland warmings. We find that warming rates similar to or higher than modern trends have only occurred during past abrupt glacial episodes. We argue that the Arctic is currently experiencing an abrupt climate change event, and that climate models underestimate this ongoing warming. In recent decades, the Arctic has warmed at over twice the global rate. This Perspective places these trends into the context of abrupt Dansgaard–Oeschger warming events in the palaeoclimate record, arguing that the contemporary Arctic is undergoing comparably abrupt climate change.