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Toward the snowball earth deglaciation…

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Abstract

The current state of knowledge suggests that the Neoproterozoic snowball Earth is far from deglaciation even at 0.2 bars of CO2. Since understanding the termination of the fully ice-covered state is essential to sustain, or not, the snowball Earth theory, we used an Atmospheric General Climate Model (AGCM) to explore some key factors which could induce deglaciation. After testing the models’ sensitivity to their parameterizations of clouds, CO2 and snow, we investigated the warming effect caused by a dusty surface, associated with ash release during a mega-volcanic eruption. We found that the snow aging process, its dirtiness and the ash deposition on the snow-free ice are key factors for deglaciation. Our modelling study suggests that, under a CO2 enriched atmosphere, a dusty snowball Earth could reach the deglaciation threshold.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the two reviewers, R. Pierrehumbert for his constructive review and comments on the snowball Earth climate, and S. Warren for his very detailed and interesting review, notably his helpful comments concerning interactions between sea-ice albedo and ash particles deposition. J.L Dufresne is thanked for discussion of an earlier version of the manuscript. This research was supported by INSU, this work being a contribution to the ANR project Accro-Earth. We used computer resources at CCRT/CEA. This is IPGP contribution no. 2587.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Université Paris, 7-Diderot, 4 place de Jussieu, 75005, Paris, France

    Guillaume Le Hir

  2. LSCE, CNRS-CEA-UVSQ, 91191, Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France

    Yannick Donnadieu & Gilles Ramstein

  3. LGGE, CNRS and UJF Grenoble, BP 96, 38402, Saint Martin d’Héres Cedex, France

    Gerhard Krinner

Authors
  1. Guillaume Le Hir
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  2. Yannick Donnadieu
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  3. Gerhard Krinner
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  4. Gilles Ramstein
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Correspondence to Guillaume Le Hir.

Appendices

Appendix

In LMDz, the radiation scheme is the one introduced several years ago in the model of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) by Morcrette: the solar part is a refined version of the scheme developed by Bonnel and Fouquart (1980) and the thermal infra-red part is due to Morcrette and Fouquart (1986). The radiative active species are H2O, O3, CO2, O2, N2O, CH4, NO2 and CFCs.

Working with high pCO2 requires that we check the validity of our radiative code, in order to correctly simulate the greenhouse warming due to CO2 rise.

The thermal infra-red part (λ > 5 μm)

An important parameter in estimating the CO2 effect is the change in the net radiative flux at the tropopause for a given temperature structure (here the US standard profile). To compare our radiative module, we have calculated the evolution of outgoing longwave radiation, using several CO2 partial pressures, with the LMDz radiative module, the FOAM radiative module (coming from the CCM3) and the polynomial fit developed by Kiehl and Dickinson (hereafter cited as K-D model) in their radiative-convective model based on the US standard profile (Kiehl and Dickinson 1987). The change in net long-wave flux from LMDz, K-D model, and FOAM radiative module, is shown in Fig. 1. Those expressions have been validated up to 0.17 bar by the authors for the K-D model and up to 0.2 bar for FOAM (Pierrehumbert 2004). The net long-wave flux comparison at high concentrations of atmospheric CO2 indicates that LMDz radiative module is appropriated for estimating the radiative infra-red effects of large amounts of CO2.

The solar part (0.2 < λ < 5 μm)

It should be noted that the radiative module of GCM includes the near infra-red in their short wave computation. This parameterization supposes that the CO2 rise can affect the radiative budget. An initial comparison between FOAM and LMDz radiative modules revealed a short wave absorption considerably greater in LMDz than FOAM. One of the main consequences of this behavior was that, in LMDz GCM simulations, the atmospheric lapse rate was altered at high pCO2 due to this significant solar absorption. Since the direct warming of the greenhouse effect depends on the lapse rate, the surface temperature predicted initially with LMDz was potentially overestimated (Le Hir et al. 2007). Both parameterizations being established on available data, it is not possible to state that one parameterization is better than the other (Bonnel and Fouquart 1980; Briegleb 1992). We just remark that both parametrizations used in those GCMs have not been recently updated. For that reason, to correctly compare FOAM and LMDz in this study, we have adapted the solar absorption in the LMDz radiative module to approximate the FOAM results.

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Le Hir, G., Donnadieu, Y., Krinner, G. et al. Toward the snowball earth deglaciation…. Clim Dyn 35, 285–297 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0748-8

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