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Peer-reviewedCC BYScience Advances

Stochastic cloud fluctuations drive Arctic winter radiative bistability

  • Jung-Sub Lim1,2
  • Graham Feingold1
  1. 1NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, CO, USA.
  2. 2Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
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Abstract

In Arctic winter, the boundary layer occupies two preferred radiative states, a cold, clear state and a heat-trapping, cloudy state, that strongly regulate surface energy loss over sea ice. Yet, reanalyses and climate models are often biased toward a single intermediate state. Using a stochastic differential equation framework applied to 27 years of high-resolution observations, we show that the observed bistability is not sustained by multiple deterministic equilibria: The mean restoring tendency is effectively single-well, while background meteorology alone cannot explain rapid transitions. Instead, the two regimes are sustained by sharply localized, state-dependent noise in the transition range. This noise structure emerges when subhourly fluctuations in liquid water path are radiatively amplified by the nonlinear saturation of longwave emissivity. Our results provide a dynamical explanation for this model bias and identify unresolved fast cloud variability as a key source of uncertainty in Arctic winter climate projections.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{lim2026stochastic,
  title = {{Stochastic cloud fluctuations drive Arctic winter radiative bistability}},
  author = {Jung-Sub Lim and Graham Feingold},
  journal = {Science Advances},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1126/sciadv.aeh3823},
  url = {https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeh3823},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Stochastic cloud fluctuations drive Arctic winter radiative bistability
AU  - Jung-Sub Lim
AU  - Graham Feingold
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/02
JO  - Science Advances
DO  - 10.1126/sciadv.aeh3823
UR  - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeh3823
AB  - In Arctic winter, the boundary layer occupies two preferred radiative states, a cold, clear state and a heat-trapping, cloudy state, that strongly regulate surface energy loss over sea ice. Yet, reanalyses and climate models are often biased toward a single intermediate state. Using a stochastic differential equation framework applied to 27 years of high-resolution observations, we show that the observed bistability is not sustained by multiple deterministic equilibria: The mean restoring tendency is effectively single-well, while background meteorology alone cannot explain rapid transitions. Instead, the two regimes are sustained by sharply localized, state-dependent noise in the transition range. This noise structure emerges when subhourly fluctuations in liquid water path are radiatively amplified by the nonlinear saturation of longwave emissivity. Our results provide a dynamical explanation for this model bias and identify unresolved fast cloud variability as a key source of uncertainty in Arctic winter climate projections.
SN  - 2375-2548
ER  -