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

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: H. Barral, C. Genthon, A. Trouvilliez, C. Brun, C. Amory
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2014
• Subjects: Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Geology; QE1-996.5; Antarc*; Antarctica; The Cryosphere
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-1905-2014; https://doaj.org/article/2fcff1f9544b4f12aa400e59a86d1f7c

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.