The transition from the present-day climate to a modern Snowball Earth

Abstract

We use the coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model ECHAM5/MPI-OM to investigate the transition from the present-day climate to a modern Snowball Earth, defined as the Earth in modern geography with complete sea-ice cover. Starting from the present-day climate and applying an abrupt decrease of total solar irradiance (TSI) we find that the critical TSI marking the Snowball Earth bifurcation point is between 91 and 94% of the present-day TSI. The Snowball Earth bifurcation point as well as the transition times are well reproduced by a zero-dimensional energy balance model of the mean ocean potential temperature. During the transition, the asymmetric distribution of continents between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere causes heat transports toward the more water-covered Southern Hemisphere. This is accompanied by an intensification of the southern Hadley cell and the wind-driven subtropical ocean cells by a factor of 4. If we set back TSI to 100% shortly before the transition to a modern Snowball Earth is completed, a narrow band of open equatorial water is sufficient for rapid melting. This implies that for 100% TSI the point of unstoppable glaciation separating partial from complete sea-ice cover is much closer to complete sea-ice cover than in classical energy balance models. Stable states can have no greater than 56.6% sea-ice cover implying that ECHAM5/MPI-OM does not exhibit stable states with near-complete sea-ice cover but open equatorial waters. © 2009 The Author(s).