Arctic as the ‘radiator fins’ of Earth in a warming climate

Bibliographic Data

ID15546012
AuthorsHan Huang (0000-0003-2867-128X, McGill University, corresponding author), Yi Huang (0000-0001-5702-0705, McGill University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume19
Issue5
Pages054032-054032
Publication date2024-04-12
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironmental Research Letters (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326
PublisherIOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1088/1748-9326/ad3e17
OpenAlexW4394771003
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited43

Earth radiates thermal radiation to balance the solar radiation it receives. Central to understanding climate change is how the radiation energy budget adjusts both globally and locally to external and internal forcing. In the past 18 years, satellite observations reveal a distinct positive trend of the Earth thermal radiation in the Arctic, which acts to radiate excess heating accumulating in the climate system to the space during global warming, i.e. a radiator fin region in a warming climate. Compared with other regions such as the tropics, the prominent trend in the Arctic results from a stronger surface and atmospheric warming and a less offsetting greenhouse effect of water vapor. Spectral decompositions further show the increase of thermal emission in the Arctic mainly originates from the far-infrared and mid-infrared window region and affirms the unbalanced radiative responses to temperature and humidity changes in these two spectral regions account for the unique thermal radiation trend in the Arctic

Arctic · Atmospheric sciences · Climate change · Climatology · Earth's energy budget · Geography · Global warming · Meteorology · Physics · Radiative Cooling · Radiative forcing · Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics · Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols · Climate variability and models · Environmental Science · Geology · Oceanography · Radiation

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