The scientific focus of this work has been on understanding radiative feedbacks within the sea ice system and on understanding the impact of clouds on the arctic radiation balance, and the interaction of cloud and albedo feedback mechanisms. Whenever the system is perturbed, all of the feedback processes participate in the response of the system, but the relative importance of each feedback depends on the nature of the perturbation.
Clouds have a net warming effect on the surface, in contrast to clouds at lower latitudes.
The modeled equilibrium sea ice thickness decreases with increasing cloud fraction and increasing cloud optical depth. Variations in cloud fraction result in variations in the onset of snow melt and the length of the melting period, which may account for observed interannual variability in the melt season. The principal uncertainty in understanding the sensitivity of the Arctic Ocean temperature to a climate perturbation is uncertainty as to whether low cloud fraction will increase or decrease. The sea ice albedo feedback mechanism on multi-year ice is dominated by melt ponds. Inclusion of sea ice dynamics and the ice thickness distribution decreases the strength of the ice albedo feedback relative to thermodynamic-only formulations.