Snowball Earth Bifurcations in a Fully-Implicit Earth System Model

Thomas E. Mulder; Heiko Goelzer; Fred W. Wubs; Henk A. Dijkstra

doi:10.1142/S0218127421300172

Snowball Earth Bifurcations in a Fully-Implicit Earth System Model

Thomas E. Mulder^*, Heiko Goelzer, Fred W. Wubs, Henk A. Dijkstra

^*Corresponding author for this work

University of Groningen

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

There is now much geological evidence that the Earth was fully glaciated during several periods in the geological past (about 700Myr ago) and attained a so-called Snowball Earth (SBE) state. Additional support for this idea has come from climate models of varying complexity that show transitions to SBE states and undergo hysteresis under changes in solar radiation. In this paper, we apply large-scale bifurcation analyses to a novel, fully-implicit Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity (I-EMIC) to study SBE transitions. The I-EMIC contains a primitive equation ocean model, a model for atmospheric heat and moisture transport, a sea ice component and formulations for the adjustment of albedo over snow and ice. With the I-EMIC, high-dimensional branches of the SBE bifurcation diagram are obtained through parameter continuation. We are able to identify stable and unstable equilibria and uncover an intricate bifurcation structure associated with the ice-albedo feedback. Moreover, large-scale linear stability analyses are performed near major bifurcations, revealing the spatial nature of destabilizing perturbations.

Original language	English
Article number	2130017
Number of pages	18
Journal	International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos
Volume	31
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218127421300172
Publication status	Published - May 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
T. E. Mulder, H. Goelzer and H. A. Dijkstra acknowledge support from the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC), financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), Grant No. 024.002.001. T. E. Mulder and F. W. Wubs also acknowledge support from the Netherlands eScience Center (NLeSC) within the SMCM project, Grant No. 027.017.G02. Lastly, we thank the two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on the manuscript.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Funding

T. E. Mulder, H. Goelzer and H. A. Dijkstra acknowledge support from the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC), financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), Grant No. 024.002.001. T. E. Mulder and F. W. Wubs also acknowledge support from the Netherlands eScience Center (NLeSC) within the SMCM project, Grant No. 027.017.G02. Lastly, we thank the two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on the manuscript.

Keywords

Bifurcation analysis
Earth system model
snowball Earth

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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s0218127421300172Final published version, 2.23 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Snowball Earth Bifurcations in a Fully-Implicit Earth System Model",

abstract = "There is now much geological evidence that the Earth was fully glaciated during several periods in the geological past (about 700Myr ago) and attained a so-called Snowball Earth (SBE) state. Additional support for this idea has come from climate models of varying complexity that show transitions to SBE states and undergo hysteresis under changes in solar radiation. In this paper, we apply large-scale bifurcation analyses to a novel, fully-implicit Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity (I-EMIC) to study SBE transitions. The I-EMIC contains a primitive equation ocean model, a model for atmospheric heat and moisture transport, a sea ice component and formulations for the adjustment of albedo over snow and ice. With the I-EMIC, high-dimensional branches of the SBE bifurcation diagram are obtained through parameter continuation. We are able to identify stable and unstable equilibria and uncover an intricate bifurcation structure associated with the ice-albedo feedback. Moreover, large-scale linear stability analyses are performed near major bifurcations, revealing the spatial nature of destabilizing perturbations.",

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N1 - Funding Information: T. E. Mulder, H. Goelzer and H. A. Dijkstra acknowledge support from the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC), financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), Grant No. 024.002.001. T. E. Mulder and F. W. Wubs also acknowledge support from the Netherlands eScience Center (NLeSC) within the SMCM project, Grant No. 027.017.G02. Lastly, we thank the two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 World Scientific Publishing Company.

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N2 - There is now much geological evidence that the Earth was fully glaciated during several periods in the geological past (about 700Myr ago) and attained a so-called Snowball Earth (SBE) state. Additional support for this idea has come from climate models of varying complexity that show transitions to SBE states and undergo hysteresis under changes in solar radiation. In this paper, we apply large-scale bifurcation analyses to a novel, fully-implicit Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity (I-EMIC) to study SBE transitions. The I-EMIC contains a primitive equation ocean model, a model for atmospheric heat and moisture transport, a sea ice component and formulations for the adjustment of albedo over snow and ice. With the I-EMIC, high-dimensional branches of the SBE bifurcation diagram are obtained through parameter continuation. We are able to identify stable and unstable equilibria and uncover an intricate bifurcation structure associated with the ice-albedo feedback. Moreover, large-scale linear stability analyses are performed near major bifurcations, revealing the spatial nature of destabilizing perturbations.

AB - There is now much geological evidence that the Earth was fully glaciated during several periods in the geological past (about 700Myr ago) and attained a so-called Snowball Earth (SBE) state. Additional support for this idea has come from climate models of varying complexity that show transitions to SBE states and undergo hysteresis under changes in solar radiation. In this paper, we apply large-scale bifurcation analyses to a novel, fully-implicit Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity (I-EMIC) to study SBE transitions. The I-EMIC contains a primitive equation ocean model, a model for atmospheric heat and moisture transport, a sea ice component and formulations for the adjustment of albedo over snow and ice. With the I-EMIC, high-dimensional branches of the SBE bifurcation diagram are obtained through parameter continuation. We are able to identify stable and unstable equilibria and uncover an intricate bifurcation structure associated with the ice-albedo feedback. Moreover, large-scale linear stability analyses are performed near major bifurcations, revealing the spatial nature of destabilizing perturbations.

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Snowball Earth Bifurcations in a Fully-Implicit Earth System Model

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

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