A high proportion of the uncertainty in the decline of Arctic sea
ice thickness in recent global climate models can be explained by
the uncertainty in the ice thickness in the late 20th century.
Experiments with one model indicate that this sensitivity to the
mean state remains even when ice-albedo feedback is eliminated from
the model. The magnitude of ice-albedo feedback is quantified and
found to be too small to be a major source of uncertainty in
thickness decline in climate models. Instead it is shown that the
sea ice growth-thickness feedback in combination with large biases
in the sea ice thickness during the 20th century can easily give
rise to very large uncertainty in future thickness decline.
Reducing biases in the surface fluxes and better tuning the surface
albedo would improve uncertainty in both present and future
prediction.

Full Article: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~bitz/Bitz_2008.pdf

Last Updated: 2008-08-21