Blowing snow in coastal Adélie Land, Antarctica: three atmospheric-moisture issues

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: Barral, H., Genthon, C., Trouvilliez, A., Brun, C., Amory, C.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-1905-2014; https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/8/1905/2014/

A total of 3 years of blowing-snow observations and associated meteorology along a 7 m mast at site D17 in coastal Adélie Land are presented. The observations are used to address three atmospheric-moisture issues related to the occurrence of blowing snow, a feature which largely affects many regions of Antarctica: (1) blowing-snow sublimation raises the moisture content of the surface atmosphere close to saturation, and atmospheric models and meteorological analyses that do not carry blowing-snow parameterizations are affected by a systematic dry bias; (2) while snowpack modelling with a parameterization of surface-snow erosion by wind can reproduce the variability of snow accumulation and ablation, ignoring the high levels of atmospheric-moisture content associated with blowing snow results in overestimating surface sublimation, affecting the energy budget of the snowpack; (3) the well-known profile method of calculating turbulent moisture fluxes is not applicable when blowing snow occurs, because moisture gradients are weak due to blowing-snow sublimation, and the impact of measurement uncertainties are strongly amplified in the case of strong winds.