Characteristics of Atmospheric Surface Layer and Heat Budget over the Arctic Ice in Summer

• Published in: Chinese Journal of Geophysics
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2006
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cjg2.839; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2Fcjg2.839; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/cjg2.839

Abstract Observational data from August 19 to 24, 1999 during the first Chinese arctic research exploration are analyzed and the vertical distribution of meteorological variables in the surface layer and the heat budget problem over ice in the Arctic region in summer are discussed. The humidity of surface layer is very high with respect to ice, and is often close to its saturated value. The ice temperature has a significant diurnal variation. The ice temperature gradient near surface is relatively large at night, and is very small during the daytime. In the top 40cm‐thick ice layer, the ice temperature sometimes reaches a maximum value at 20cm depth. The heat budget analysis shows that the heat loss during night caused by the radiation cooling effect is compensated by heat transported from inner ice layer to ice surface. In daytime, the inner ice heat comes mainly from penetrating shortwave radiation, and heat exchange between ice surface and inner ice is very weak. The ice/snow thaw heat in daytime can not be neglected.