Brief Communication: Upper-air relaxation in RACMO2 significantly improves modelled interannual surface mass balance variability in Antarctica

The Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO2) has been a powerful tool for improving surface mass balance (SMB) estimates from GCMs or reanalyses. However, new yearly SMB observations for West Antarctica show that the modelled interannual variability in SMB is poorly simulated by RACMO2, in contra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Cryosphere
Main Authors: W. J. van de Berg, B. Medley
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2016
Subjects:
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Geology
QE1-996.5
Antarctic
The Antarctic
Antarctic Peninsula
West Antarctica
Antarc*
Antarctica
Ice Sheet
The Cryosphere
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-459-2016
https://doaj.org/article/7589ea61eaa54db2aa888a844187d2e1
Description
Summary:The Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO2) has been a powerful tool for improving surface mass balance (SMB) estimates from GCMs or reanalyses. However, new yearly SMB observations for West Antarctica show that the modelled interannual variability in SMB is poorly simulated by RACMO2, in contrast to ERA-Interim, which resolves this variability well. In an attempt to remedy RACMO2 performance, we included additional upper-air relaxation (UAR) in RACMO2. With UAR, the correlation to observations is similar for RACMO2 and ERA-Interim. The spatial SMB patterns and ice-sheet-integrated SMB modelled using UAR remain very similar to the estimates of RACMO2 without UAR. We only observe an upstream smoothing of precipitation in regions with very steep topography like the Antarctic Peninsula. We conclude that UAR is a useful improvement for regional climate model simulations, although results in regions with steep topography should be treated with care.

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