On the Importance of Representing Snow Over Sea‐Ice for Simulating the Arctic Boundary Layer
Abstract Correctly representing the snow on sea‐ice has great potential to improve cryosphere‐atmosphere coupling in forecasting and monitoring (e.g., reanalysis) applications, via improved modeling of surface temperature, albedo and emissivity. This can also enhance the all‐weather all‐surface coup...
Published in: | Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems |
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American Geophysical Union (AGU)
2022
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:0f8dd629a6c24bf5b28a3788bfc1751a 2023-05-15T13:11:28+02:00 On the Importance of Representing Snow Over Sea‐Ice for Simulating the Arctic Boundary Layer Gabriele Arduini Sarah Keeley Jonathan J. Day Irina Sandu Lorenzo Zampieri Gianpaolo Balsamo 2022-07-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002777 https://doaj.org/article/0f8dd629a6c24bf5b28a3788bfc1751a EN eng American Geophysical Union (AGU) https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002777 https://doaj.org/toc/1942-2466 1942-2466 doi:10.1029/2021MS002777 https://doaj.org/article/0f8dd629a6c24bf5b28a3788bfc1751a Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol 14, Iss 7, Pp n/a-n/a (2022) sea‐ice Arctic boundary‐layer snow‐atmosphere coupling numerical weather prediction cryosphere Physical geography GB3-5030 Oceanography GC1-1581 article 2022 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002777 2022-12-30T23:44:06Z Abstract Correctly representing the snow on sea‐ice has great potential to improve cryosphere‐atmosphere coupling in forecasting and monitoring (e.g., reanalysis) applications, via improved modeling of surface temperature, albedo and emissivity. This can also enhance the all‐weather all‐surface coupled data assimilation for atmospheric satellite radiances. Using wintertime observations from two Arctic field campaigns, SHEBA and N‐ICE2015, and satellite data, we explore the merits of different approaches to represent the snow over sea‐ice in a set of 5‐day coupled forecasts. Results show that representing the snow insulation effects is essential for capturing the wintertime surface temperature variability over sea‐ice and its response to changes in the atmospheric forcing. Modeling the snow over sea‐ice improves the representation of strong cooling events, reduces surface temperature biases in clear‐sky conditions and improves the simulation of surface‐based temperature inversions. In clear‐sky conditions, when using a multi‐layer snow scheme the root‐mean‐squared error in the surface temperature is reduced by about 60% for both N‐ICE2015 and SHEBA. This study also highlights the role of compensating errors in different components of the surface energy budget in the Arctic boundary layer. During warm air intrusions, errors in the surface temperature increase when cloud phase and cloud radiative processes are misrepresented in the model, inducing large errors in the net radiative energy at the surface. This work indicates that numerical weather prediction systems can fully benefit from a better representation of snow over sea‐ice, for example, with multi‐layer snow schemes, combined with improvements to other boundary layer processes including mixed phase clouds. Article in Journal/Newspaper albedo Arctic Sea ice Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Arctic Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 14 7 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
sea‐ice Arctic boundary‐layer snow‐atmosphere coupling numerical weather prediction cryosphere Physical geography GB3-5030 Oceanography GC1-1581 |
spellingShingle |
sea‐ice Arctic boundary‐layer snow‐atmosphere coupling numerical weather prediction cryosphere Physical geography GB3-5030 Oceanography GC1-1581 Gabriele Arduini Sarah Keeley Jonathan J. Day Irina Sandu Lorenzo Zampieri Gianpaolo Balsamo On the Importance of Representing Snow Over Sea‐Ice for Simulating the Arctic Boundary Layer |
topic_facet |
sea‐ice Arctic boundary‐layer snow‐atmosphere coupling numerical weather prediction cryosphere Physical geography GB3-5030 Oceanography GC1-1581 |
description |
Abstract Correctly representing the snow on sea‐ice has great potential to improve cryosphere‐atmosphere coupling in forecasting and monitoring (e.g., reanalysis) applications, via improved modeling of surface temperature, albedo and emissivity. This can also enhance the all‐weather all‐surface coupled data assimilation for atmospheric satellite radiances. Using wintertime observations from two Arctic field campaigns, SHEBA and N‐ICE2015, and satellite data, we explore the merits of different approaches to represent the snow over sea‐ice in a set of 5‐day coupled forecasts. Results show that representing the snow insulation effects is essential for capturing the wintertime surface temperature variability over sea‐ice and its response to changes in the atmospheric forcing. Modeling the snow over sea‐ice improves the representation of strong cooling events, reduces surface temperature biases in clear‐sky conditions and improves the simulation of surface‐based temperature inversions. In clear‐sky conditions, when using a multi‐layer snow scheme the root‐mean‐squared error in the surface temperature is reduced by about 60% for both N‐ICE2015 and SHEBA. This study also highlights the role of compensating errors in different components of the surface energy budget in the Arctic boundary layer. During warm air intrusions, errors in the surface temperature increase when cloud phase and cloud radiative processes are misrepresented in the model, inducing large errors in the net radiative energy at the surface. This work indicates that numerical weather prediction systems can fully benefit from a better representation of snow over sea‐ice, for example, with multi‐layer snow schemes, combined with improvements to other boundary layer processes including mixed phase clouds. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Gabriele Arduini Sarah Keeley Jonathan J. Day Irina Sandu Lorenzo Zampieri Gianpaolo Balsamo |
author_facet |
Gabriele Arduini Sarah Keeley Jonathan J. Day Irina Sandu Lorenzo Zampieri Gianpaolo Balsamo |
author_sort |
Gabriele Arduini |
title |
On the Importance of Representing Snow Over Sea‐Ice for Simulating the Arctic Boundary Layer |
title_short |
On the Importance of Representing Snow Over Sea‐Ice for Simulating the Arctic Boundary Layer |
title_full |
On the Importance of Representing Snow Over Sea‐Ice for Simulating the Arctic Boundary Layer |
title_fullStr |
On the Importance of Representing Snow Over Sea‐Ice for Simulating the Arctic Boundary Layer |
title_full_unstemmed |
On the Importance of Representing Snow Over Sea‐Ice for Simulating the Arctic Boundary Layer |
title_sort |
on the importance of representing snow over sea‐ice for simulating the arctic boundary layer |
publisher |
American Geophysical Union (AGU) |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002777 https://doaj.org/article/0f8dd629a6c24bf5b28a3788bfc1751a |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
albedo Arctic Sea ice |
genre_facet |
albedo Arctic Sea ice |
op_source |
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol 14, Iss 7, Pp n/a-n/a (2022) |
op_relation |
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002777 https://doaj.org/toc/1942-2466 1942-2466 doi:10.1029/2021MS002777 https://doaj.org/article/0f8dd629a6c24bf5b28a3788bfc1751a |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002777 |
container_title |
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems |
container_volume |
14 |
container_issue |
7 |
_version_ |
1766247525815156736 |