Snowfall in Northern Finland derives mostly from ice clouds
Cloud properties play a critical role in the Arctic surface energy budget. We present ground-level observations of snowfall coinciding with radiosonde launches in Sodankylä (67.367° N, 26.629° E) through a period of eight cold months (October–April) in 2019 and 2020. They comprise 7401 depositing sn...
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ftcopernicus:oai:publications.copernicus.org:acpd101261 2023-05-15T14:55:15+02:00 Snowfall in Northern Finland derives mostly from ice clouds Mignani, Claudia Zimmermann, Lukas Kivi, Rigel Berne, Alexis Conen, Franz 2022-03-14 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2022-98 https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2022-98/ eng eng doi:10.5194/acp-2022-98 https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2022-98/ eISSN: 1680-7324 Text 2022 ftcopernicus https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2022-98 2022-03-21T17:22:17Z Cloud properties play a critical role in the Arctic surface energy budget. We present ground-level observations of snowfall coinciding with radiosonde launches in Sodankylä (67.367° N, 26.629° E) through a period of eight cold months (October–April) in 2019 and 2020. They comprise 7401 depositing snow particles detected by a snowflake camera and 468 radiosonde profiles. Our results show that precipitating clouds were extending from ground to at least 2.7 km in altitude. Approximately one quarter of them were mixed-phase and the rest were likely fully glaciated. Estimations of the cloud top temperatures indicate that in roughly half of the snowfall events ice might have been initiated through heterogeneous freezing. For such cases, the predicted ice-nucleating particle concentrations active at cloud top temperatures could explain the analysed ice crystal particle concentrations observed near ground. In a warmer climate, the relative proportion of solid to liquid cloud particles will probably decrease, with implications on the Arctic radiation balance. Text Arctic Northern Finland Sodankylä Copernicus Publications: E-Journals Arctic Sodankylä ENVELOPE(26.600,26.600,67.417,67.417) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Copernicus Publications: E-Journals |
op_collection_id |
ftcopernicus |
language |
English |
description |
Cloud properties play a critical role in the Arctic surface energy budget. We present ground-level observations of snowfall coinciding with radiosonde launches in Sodankylä (67.367° N, 26.629° E) through a period of eight cold months (October–April) in 2019 and 2020. They comprise 7401 depositing snow particles detected by a snowflake camera and 468 radiosonde profiles. Our results show that precipitating clouds were extending from ground to at least 2.7 km in altitude. Approximately one quarter of them were mixed-phase and the rest were likely fully glaciated. Estimations of the cloud top temperatures indicate that in roughly half of the snowfall events ice might have been initiated through heterogeneous freezing. For such cases, the predicted ice-nucleating particle concentrations active at cloud top temperatures could explain the analysed ice crystal particle concentrations observed near ground. In a warmer climate, the relative proportion of solid to liquid cloud particles will probably decrease, with implications on the Arctic radiation balance. |
format |
Text |
author |
Mignani, Claudia Zimmermann, Lukas Kivi, Rigel Berne, Alexis Conen, Franz |
spellingShingle |
Mignani, Claudia Zimmermann, Lukas Kivi, Rigel Berne, Alexis Conen, Franz Snowfall in Northern Finland derives mostly from ice clouds |
author_facet |
Mignani, Claudia Zimmermann, Lukas Kivi, Rigel Berne, Alexis Conen, Franz |
author_sort |
Mignani, Claudia |
title |
Snowfall in Northern Finland derives mostly from ice clouds |
title_short |
Snowfall in Northern Finland derives mostly from ice clouds |
title_full |
Snowfall in Northern Finland derives mostly from ice clouds |
title_fullStr |
Snowfall in Northern Finland derives mostly from ice clouds |
title_full_unstemmed |
Snowfall in Northern Finland derives mostly from ice clouds |
title_sort |
snowfall in northern finland derives mostly from ice clouds |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2022-98 https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2022-98/ |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(26.600,26.600,67.417,67.417) |
geographic |
Arctic Sodankylä |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Sodankylä |
genre |
Arctic Northern Finland Sodankylä |
genre_facet |
Arctic Northern Finland Sodankylä |
op_source |
eISSN: 1680-7324 |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/acp-2022-98 https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2022-98/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2022-98 |
_version_ |
1766327043238133760 |