Sensitivity Analysis of Arctic Sea Ice in CMIP5 Climate Model Simulations - IPCC

The representative characteristics of the simulated 20th century North Hemisphere sea ice by the CMIP5 models have been evaluated against available observations and compared with those by the CMIP3 models. In addition to the analysis of conventional parameters, such as climatological mean and seasonal cycle of sea ice area (SIA), a transient sensitivity analysis of summer SIA to the changes in Arctic regionally averaged melting season surface air temperatures (SAT) was conducted to better understand physics behind model uncertainties (e.g., Gregory et al. 2004; Zhang 2010).