А.М. Обухова РАН, Москва, Россия; 2Институт географии РАН, Москва, Россия; 3Центр океанических исследований Гельмгольца ГЕОМАР, Киль, Германия; 4Бременский университет, Бремен, Германия; 5Кильский университет, Киль, Германия *vasemenov@mail.ru Arctic sea ice area changes in CMIP3 and CMIP5 climate models’ ensembles V.A. <...> Astafieva2 1Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; 2Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; 3GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany; 4University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany; 5Kiel University, Kiel, Germany *vasemenov@mail.ru Received September 21, 2016 Keywords: Arctic sea ice area, climate models, climate change scenarios, CMIP3 model, CMIP5 model. <...> Summary The shrinking Arctic sea ice cover observed during the last decades is probably the clearest manifestation of ongoing climate change. <...> While climate models in general reproduce the sea ice retreat in the Arctic during the 20th century and simulate further sea ice area loss during the 21st century in response to anthropogenic forcing, the models suffer from large biases and the results exhibit considerable spread. <...> Further, the sensitivity of SIA to changes in Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature is investigated and dynamical links between SIA and some atmospheric variability modes are assessed. <...> The spatial patterns of SIC variability improve in CMIP5 ensemble, most noticeably in summer when compared to HadISST1 data. <...> Both CMIP ensembles depict a significant link between the SIA and NH temperature changes indicating that a part of inter-ensemble SIA spread comes from different temperature sensitivity to anthropogenic forcing. <...> The results suggest that, in general, a sensitivity of SIA to external <...>