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| 02 Oct 2024
Snowball Earth transitions from Last Glacial Maximum conditions provide an independent upper limit on Earth’s climate sensitivity
Abstract. Geological evidence of a snowball Earth state indicate persistent tropical sea ice cover during the Neoproterozoic (> 635 million years ago). Current theory is that a strengthening of the positive surface albedo feedback with cooling temperatures, eventually exceeding the sum of all other feedbacks, leads to a global climate instability. Several recent high sensitivity climate models with strongly positive cloud feedbacks have not been able to simulate the much warmer Last Glacial Maximum state, suggestive that they cool excessively in response to a modest decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and therefore enter the snowball instability by this mechanism. Using a coupled Earth system model, MPI-ESM1.2, we show that clouds accelerate the transition to a snowball Earth state and reduce the radiative forcing required to trigger the climate instability. Positive cloud feedbacks over tropical oceans and ahead of the sea-ice edge act to cool down the oceans and promote sea ice formation. Regardless, when approached slowly the snowball Earth transitions appear to occur around a global mean temperature of zero degree Celsius, simultaneously with the sea ice edge advancing into the sub-tropics thereby strengthening the surface albedo feedback. This temperature threshold, if supported by several climate models, could be used as a novel and independent constraint on the upper bound of climate sensitivity. Currently, using the results from MPI-ESM1.2, we find it is implausible that Earth's climate sensitivity exceeds 5.5 K (4.4–6.6, 90 percent confidence).
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-2981', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Oct 2024
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Review for manuscript "Snowball Earth transitions from Last Glacial Maximum conditions provide an independent upper limit on Earth's climate sensitivity"
Authors: Martin Renoult, Navjit Sagoo, Johannes Hörner, Thorsten Mauritsen
General comments
In the presented manuscript, the authors study relevant climate feedbacks during the initiation of a snowball Earth from pre-industrial (PI) or Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) conditions using Earth system model (ESM) simulations. Furthermore, the authors present a novel way of contraining an upper bound of the Earth's equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), by deriving a relationship between an Earth system model's ECS and the simulated global mean (sea surface) temperature anomaly of the LGM compared to PI conditions. While I am not sure about the novelty and relevance of the analysis of climate feedbacks during snowball Earth initiation, the attempted contraint of ECS is very interesting and seems scientifically relevant. The chosen tool (ESMs) are a good way to approach this problem. However, there are some issues with the manuscript in its current state that, in my eyes, need to be resolved before publication of this work.
All potential issues are listed below under "specific comments", but I highlight the main ones here:
- The introduction and the method sections are a bit too short in my opinion: Some existing research about climate feedbacks during snowball Earth initiation is not discussed, the introduction fails to explain the reasoning behind the ECS constraint and the method section should go into a bit more detail about the used methods, instead of mostly referring to existing articles.
- It does not at all become clear, how the global mean temperature at which snowball Earth inception occurs is being derived from the individual simulations.
- My main concern is that the assumption that all models and setups would have a "snowball Earth inception temperature" of roughly 0 °C is too far fetched. This goes together with the above point that the derivation of this temperature is not clearly described and that even the results of the presented setup point to quite some uncertainty in my eyes (although a different derivation method could give a more precise, but model-specific number, as discussed below). This is especially worrying, as it seems that the uncertainty around the value of the inception temperature does not enter the calculation of the ECS constraint. If it would enter, the confidence on the reported value should be reduced significantly, unfortunately also reducing the significance of the findings reported in this manuscript.
Overall, the scientific idea, the chosen approach and the considerable amount of effort that went into conducting the simulations, make this manuscript a suitable contribution to ESD. However, the long list of issues and the potentially reduced certainty of the main finding of this work make me suggest that this manuscript should only be reconsidered after major revision.
Specific comments
- The analysis of what feedbacks are important in the snowball Earth transition is not something completely new. For example, the contribution of Pierrehumbert et al. (2011) in the "Snowmip" activity is not mentioned at all (which is odd considering that the authors write about scientifc discussions with Raymond Pierrehumbert and other involved persons in their acknowledgements). Pierrehumbert et al. (2011) specifically discuss that snow and sea-ice albedos together with clouds and atmospheric circulation have a major control of the models behaviour during snowball Earth initiation. There is a short introduction to the topic in the very first paragraph, but I would strongly suggest to add more discussion of the existing literature here.
- l. 31: After the introduction, it is still not clear how the logic behind the ECS constraint works. I would suggest to elaborate on the approach, i.e. that you constrain ECS ultimately by fitting a line for the relationship between a models ECS and the simulated LGM temperature anomaly, and then assume that there is a fixed value of the anomaly at which a snowball Earth would be initiated (in all models). Since a snowball Earth did not happen, you have a new and independent limit on ECS. This reasoning is completely missing in the introduction, so the reader has to guess how this should work. I would suggest to add a bit more explanation in the abstract too, since this is the main point of the paper.
- l. 47-50: How is the growing sea ice problem then treated in MPI-ESM? The reasoning behind having the limit is to avoid numerical artefacts or model crashes as the surface layer runs dry. After reading the rest of the manuscript, it seems like this is just ignored and only the 50 ppm-simulation crashes after 1848 years because of this problem. But why is this not a problem earlier and in the other simulations? This limiter was included, because even pre-industrial states sometimes got too thick ice and crashed. Why are your much colder simulations not crashing quickly?
- Methods generally: The authors refer to other papers for their methods, but I think some more explanation should enter also here, to let the reader understand what is being done without having to read up in other papers.
- Table 1: It does not really become clear why all the different runs are being done. A bit more thourough explanation of why the individual sets of simulations are being done would make it easier to understand from the beginning, and not after reading the whole manuscrpt.
- When first looking at Fig. 1, I assumed all dots correspond to stable climate states, but later it became clear that these were taken out of transient simulations that are in the middle of approaching a snowball Earth. Over which time periods where they averaged and should these numbers really be produced from non-equlibrium climate states? There generally needs to be more explanation which goes together with the fact that the method section is quite short. There is a similar issue with Fig. 2. These maps are all from one simulation, so over which time periods were they created? A figure with some simple time series of the runs would be very helpful.
- l. 106-108: First, it is said that positive cloud feedbacks at the sea-ice edge decrease the temperature of instability, then it is said that cloud feedbacks substantially increase the threshold CO2 level, which are opposing statements. I can imagine this dicrepancy comes from comparing local to global effects of the cloud feedback or because neglecting the cloud feedback would decrease global mean temperatures at a reference CO2 level, but please explain in more detail what is the cause of the discrepancy here.
- Fig. 3 description: Terming some phrases "stable climate" even though some of the runs are in the middle of a transition towards a snowball Earth seems incorrect to me. Please elaborate and be more specific about what is actually meant here.
- l. 115: To me Fig. 3 does not really show that the different runs transit towards a snowball Earth at roughly the same (transient) global mean temperature. Again, a simple figure with time series of global mean temperature in all the runs would be helpful to support these kind of statements.
- Fig. 4: Generally, schematics are nice, but this one is hardly telling a story. Could it be a bit more elaborate or just left out? If you want to keep this in, I am not going to oppose.
- Chapter 4: I am having a hard time believing that the temperature at which the climate transits to a snowball Earth state is similar across CO2 forcings, setups and even supposedly climate models (l. 118). First of all, what temperature is even meant here? These are all transient simulations, so I assume it is not the global mean temperature of the last stable pre-snowball equilibrium climate (which would surely be highly dependent on the climate model). Is it the (global mean) temperature at which the TOA radiative imbalance starts to grow over time again, as marked by the different phases in Figs. 3 and A1? But then, this is all but a clearly defined temperature range, as can be seen from the large ranges where the imbalance goes sideways in some runs, and even if taking the shown different colors as markers, there is still a range of ~10 K between the different runs. Does this count as "broadly similar"? Especially the statement that this temperature will still be the same even with other climate models seems dubios to me. Again, some of this issue could potentially be resolved by simply explaining more thourougly the procedure that was taken.
- l. 127: Now it sounds like the "inception temperature" is actually the global mean temperature of the last stable pre-snowball climate state? A clear definition of what you mean by this temperature is highly desirable. Also, the final global mean temperature of the 50 ppm run (assuming it reached climatic equilibrium and that a further lowering of CO2 would drive the climate into a snowball state) IS probably the "inception temperature", when defined as above. I don't think that the other transient simulations can give any more reliable input. Hence, simply finding the last stable pre-snowball climate by iteratively changing the CO2 concentration of individual runs would give a more reliable and more precise estimate of the "inception temperature" for a given model setup.
- l. 142: I find it very problematic to make such statements. First of all, what is the uncertainty range here? It seems to be in the order of at least 5 K. Second, it should be made clear that if this would be a sound statement, it would only be valid for the modern arrangement of continents and not for the setup during the Neoproterozoic, where the snowball Earth actually occurred. This needs to be specified. Lastly, this temperature is in fact highly model dependent. From personal experience, I can say that parameterisations like the sea-ice and snow albedos or even small changes in parameters of sea-ice dynamics can shift the transition towards snowball Earth inception substantially.
- l. 151: how does Fig. 5 show that the instability is around 0°C?
- l. 162: How are the critical ECS and the confidence interval computed? It seems like the values just come from the fit of the regression line in Fig. 6. But how does this account for the uncertainty in the "inception temperature", which surely has an uncertainty range of several degrees, maybe up to 5 K or more. This would substantially increase the uncertainty in the calculated upper limit of ECS.
- l. 179: Point 3 is not really part of the recipe from the points above, but rather a general proposal, hence it doesn't really fit into the list.
Overall text:
- Quite often simply the term temperature is used for "global mean temperature", which could lead to confusion. I'd suggest to be more precise with the wording.
- The sentence structure is not always sensible (e.g. l. 15: it is not the geological evidence that supports the formation of sea ice within tropical regions, but there is geological evidence that supports the hypothesis that there was sea ice in tropical regions).
- Sometimes unclear and weak use of the english language, like in l.127: "...the inception temperature happens at a temperature...". Not the inception temperature happens at a specific temperature, but snowball Earth inception does.
Technical corrections
- l.15 and other locations: To my knowledge, it should generally be "sea ice" without the hyphen, but then "sea-ice albedo", i.e. including a hyphen when combined with a following noun.
- l. 18 "referred to as"
- l.38 bad punctuation around MPI-ESM1.2
- l. 69-70: Example of weak language, making it hard to follow the text. "... the highest value of the Earth's ECS that does not lead to an unstable LGM state represents an upper limit..."
- l. 93 "snow ball"?
- l. 125: 50 ppm is rather 1/5 to 1/6 and not 1/4 of PI CO2, why not be precise?
- l. 140: "involve"
- l. 150 "as MPI-ESM1.2"
- l. 156-158: bad punctuation or sentence structure
- l.176 "surface"
- l. 184 "...model Earth's climate sensitivity." What does this man?
- l. 290: The doi in the reference does not go to the actual article, but to an eossar link. Please link the actual article.
References
Pierrehumbert, R. T., Abbot, D. S., Voigt, A., & Koll, D. (2011). Climate of the Neoproterozoic. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 39(1), 417-460, doi: 10.1146/annurev-earth-040809-152447
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2981-RC1
Data sets
Simulation outputs for the manuscript "Snowball Earth transitions from Last Glacial Maximum conditions provide an independent upper limit on Earth's climate sensitivity" Martin Renoult https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8117483
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