Surface atmospheric duct over Svalbard, Arctic, related to atmospheric and ocean conditions in winter

• Published in: Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research
• Main Authors: Jinhuan Zhu, Han Zou, Linlin Kong, Libo Zhou, Peng Li, Wei Cheng, Shuangshuang Bian
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2022
• Subjects: Atmospheric duct; arctic; Svalbard; atmospheric condition; atmospheric structure; geo; envir; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Antarctic and Alpine Research
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1080/15230430.2022.2072052; https://doaj.org/article/3c24e1a438684ae7accc97e0907a7849

Atmospheric ducts could disturb radar detection and radio communication in the Arctic and risk increasing human activities under Arctic warming. It is an urgent need to understand atmospheric ducts in the Arctic, with distinct atmospheric systems and environment. This study attempts to analyze the surface atmospheric ducts over Svalbard, as a critical region in the Arctic Ocean, and discuss the relation to atmospheric and oceanic conditions, based on observation and reanalysis data. The results show an occurrence of 12.6 percent, mean strength of 1.30 MU, and mean depth of 13 m for the surface duct in Svalbard winter from December 2018 to February 2020. The surface duct is characterized as two types: T-type ducts mainly constructed by temperature inversion and H-type ducts constructed by a humidity gradient. The T-type duct dominates the surface duct in Svalbard winter, with an appearance percentage of 80 percent, indicating an importance of temperature inversion in surface duct construction. The surface duct is closely related to atmospheric and oceanic conditions in Svalbard winter, because the T-type duct occurs in colder, drier, and northeasterly weather and the H-type duct occurs in warmer, wetter, and southeasterly weather with higher sea surface temperature.