Historical Climate and Future Projection in the North Atlantic and Arctic: Insights from EC-Earth3 High-Resolution Simulations

This study presents a new set of high-resolution global climate simulations conducted with the EC-Earth3 model, including a 350-year pre-industrial, followed by historical (1850–2014) and future (2015–2100, SSP2-4.5) simulations. The model features a horizontal resolution of ~40 km in the atmosphere and 0.25° in the ocean. The high-resolution EC-Earth3 (EC-Earth3-HR) is compared to the standard-resolution version used in CMIP6 to assess the impact of increased resolution on the representation of key climate variables, focusing particularly on the Arctic and North Atlantic regions. The high-resolution model aligns more closely with reanalysis data, particularly for global mean surface temperature and sea surface temperature. Both model resolutions exhibit similar biases in North Atlantic sea surface temperature and salinity, and in Arctic sea ice concentration, although the higher-resolution version shows regional improvements. The EC-Earth3-HR model captures the observed AMOC variability in the early 2000s, along with the trend and rapid loss event in Arctic sea ice. For future projections under SSP2-4.5, the high-resolution model projects a nearly ice-free Arctic by 2040—earlier than the standard-resolution model—while simulating less Arctic warming and a more pronounced weakening of the AMOC. Furthermore, we present a novel method for estimating deep water formation rates and examining the processes contributing to the weakening of the AMOC. Our analysis shows that, in future projections, the Labrador Sea is responsible for the weakening of the AMOC, while the Irminger Basin, which has the strongest contribution to the AMOC, plays a crucial role in sustaining it. In these projections, deep water formation in the Labrador Sea undergoes a complete shutdown, while it decreases by 62 % in the Greenland Sea and only 13 % in the Irminger Sea.