WACCM6 projections of polar mesospheric cloud abundance over the 21st century

PMC are considered a direct and sensitive indicator of climate change and have been reported to appear more frequently in recent decades. How PMC will change in the future under the influence of natural variability and anthropogenic forcing is uncertain.

In this study, we utilize model output from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model under several shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) scenarios and input the water vapor, temperature, and pressure information into a 0-d PMC model to project the trend and variation of PMC over the 21st century, and their relationship to future changes of temperature, water vapor, and the solar cycle. The 0-d model calculations indicate that PMC ice water content (IWC) will increase and PMC will extend to lower latitudes under high SSP scenarios.