The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2021) emphasized that “the linkage between Arctic warming and mid-latitude circulation is an example of contrasting lines of evidence that cannot yet be reconciled.” The MAPARC project was launched to confront this scientific challenge by building an innovative collaboration between Norway and China.
The Arctic is undergoing rapid transformations: longer ice-free seasons, thinner and more mobile sea ice, warmer oceans and atmosphere, shifting circulation regimes, and more frequent extremes. These changes point to the rise of a “new Arctic,” which is strongly coupled to climate systems across Eurasia and beyond.
Over the past three years, MAPARC has provided new and credible knowledge on the causes, impacts, and predictability of Arctic change:
(1) Sea ice seasonality and energy budgets: We showed how earlier spring melt, delayed autumn freeze, and the growth of thin winter ice reshape the Arctic’s annual heat exchange with the atmosphere, amplifying seasonal energy redistribution.
(2) Air–sea–ice interactions and deep Arctic warming: We identified how processes such as salinification in the Kara–Laptev Seas and Rossby wave pathways from the North Atlantic and Barents region drive both local warming and downstream effects on Eurasian climate.
(3) Sources of predictability: We developed and tested new statistical and machine-learning models for sea-ice and circulation forecasts, demonstrated that Eurasian snow cover and North Atlantic SSTs provide useful predictors, and highlighted how extreme events (such as East Asian cold surges) can be traced back to Arctic drivers.
(4) Advances in prediction systems: By combining the Norwegian Climate Prediction Model (NorCPM) with novel Chinese approaches like the “DY method,” we have improved the skill of climate prediction at monthly to seasonal scales.
Beyond scientific results, MAPARC has become a strong driver of bilateral cooperation. Since the project began, I have served as the key coordinator of the Nansen-Zhu International Research Centre (NZC), the central platform for Norwegian–Chinese collaboration in climate research. Under this framework, MAPARC has supported joint PhD supervision, exchange visits, international symposia, and the 10th NZC Summer School in Rosendal, Norway.
Importantly, the MAPARC collaboration laid the foundation for a new bilateral project funded in 2024 by the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills, which runs until 2028. This project consolidates and extends the long-term Norwegian–Chinese partnership built at NZC, ensuring continuity of knowledge exchange, researcher mobility, and joint capacity-building.
In short, MAPARC has not only advanced the science of Arctic–midlatitude linkages and prediction, but also strengthened the institutional and human networks that will allow Norway and China to remain at the forefront of Arctic climate research for years to come.
Arctic is entering into a new era where there is more open ocean in summer and increasing area of newly-formed sea ice in winter. Meanwhile, the new Arctic is undergoing a deep warming extending from the interior ocean to the upper troposphere. It implies significant changes of ocean conditions, atmosphere circulations and climate patterns, bringing challenges to the implementation of existing knowledge on the prediction of new Arctic climate system.
MAPARC aims to enhance the mechanistic understanding of Arctic climate change and to improve the prediction of new Arctic climate system.
We will quantify the observed changes of Arctic air-sea-ice interaction due to the increased area of newly-formed sea ice, and use state-of-the-art coupled climate model and regional atmospheric model to confirm the underlying thermodynamic feedbacks.
Existing multi-model large ensemble climate simulations will be used to identify the local and remote processes responsible for the Arctic near-surface warming and deep warming and their downstream effects (e.g., extremes over Eurasia). We will then use the Norwegian Earth System Model and modern techniques such as causal effect networks to confirm the causality of climate linkages.
We will further use the large ensemble simulations to assess the effects of externally-forced (e.g., radiative forcing), boundary forcing (e.g., sea ice and ocean temperature) and internal stochastic forcing on the changes of mid-high latitude atmospheric circulations such as stratospheric polar vortex, jet stream and blocking.
Equipped with enhanced mechanistic understanding, we will then use the dynamical climate prediction systems and advanced approaches including statistical downscaling and machine learning to develop hybrid models for the prediction of new Arctic climate system.
The well-established collaboration between the Norwegian and Chinese PIs and the complementary expertise and technology of the project group will ensure the success of MAPARC.
