Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet
The modeling of ice sheets in Earth system models (ESMs) is an active area of research with applications to future sea level rise projections and paleoclimate studies. A major challenge for surface mass balance (SMB) modeling with ESMs arises from their coarse resolution. This paper evaluates the el...
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fttriple:oai:gotriple.eu:oai:doaj.org/article:ea3afcb83c9946ce86b1ff7aba67e505 2023-05-15T16:27:17+02:00 Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet R. Sellevold L. van Kampenhout J. T. M. Lenaerts B. Noël W. H. Lipscomb M. Vizcaino 2019-12-01 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019 https://www.the-cryosphere.net/13/3193/2019/tc-13-3193-2019.pdf https://doaj.org/article/ea3afcb83c9946ce86b1ff7aba67e505 en eng Copernicus Publications doi:10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019 1994-0416 1994-0424 https://www.the-cryosphere.net/13/3193/2019/tc-13-3193-2019.pdf https://doaj.org/article/ea3afcb83c9946ce86b1ff7aba67e505 undefined The Cryosphere, Vol 13, Pp 3193-3208 (2019) geo envir Journal Article https://vocabularies.coar-repositories.org/resource_types/c_6501/ 2019 fttriple https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019 2023-01-22T19:33:51Z The modeling of ice sheets in Earth system models (ESMs) is an active area of research with applications to future sea level rise projections and paleoclimate studies. A major challenge for surface mass balance (SMB) modeling with ESMs arises from their coarse resolution. This paper evaluates the elevation class (EC) method as an SMB downscaling alternative to the dynamical downscaling of regional climate models. To this end, we compare EC-simulated elevation-dependent surface energy and mass balance gradients from the Community Earth System Model 1.0 (CESM1.0) with those from the regional climate model RACMO2.3. The EC implementation in CESM1.0 combines prognostic snow albedo, a multilayer snow model, and elevation corrections for two atmospheric forcing variables: temperature and humidity. Despite making no corrections for incoming radiation and precipitation, we find that the EC method in CESM1.0 yields similar SMB gradients to RACMO2.3, in part due to compensating biases in snowfall, surface melt, and refreezing gradients. We discuss the sensitivity of the results to the lapse rate used for the temperature correction. We also evaluate the impact of the EC method on the climate simulated by the ESM and find minor cooling over the Greenland ice sheet and Barents and Greenland seas, which compensates for a warm bias in the ESM due to topographic smoothing. Based on our diagnostic procedure to evaluate the EC method, we make several recommendations for future implementations. Article in Journal/Newspaper Greenland Ice Sheet The Cryosphere Unknown Greenland The Cryosphere 13 12 3193 3208 |
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English |
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geo envir R. Sellevold L. van Kampenhout J. T. M. Lenaerts B. Noël W. H. Lipscomb M. Vizcaino Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet |
topic_facet |
geo envir |
description |
The modeling of ice sheets in Earth system models (ESMs) is an active area of research with applications to future sea level rise projections and paleoclimate studies. A major challenge for surface mass balance (SMB) modeling with ESMs arises from their coarse resolution. This paper evaluates the elevation class (EC) method as an SMB downscaling alternative to the dynamical downscaling of regional climate models. To this end, we compare EC-simulated elevation-dependent surface energy and mass balance gradients from the Community Earth System Model 1.0 (CESM1.0) with those from the regional climate model RACMO2.3. The EC implementation in CESM1.0 combines prognostic snow albedo, a multilayer snow model, and elevation corrections for two atmospheric forcing variables: temperature and humidity. Despite making no corrections for incoming radiation and precipitation, we find that the EC method in CESM1.0 yields similar SMB gradients to RACMO2.3, in part due to compensating biases in snowfall, surface melt, and refreezing gradients. We discuss the sensitivity of the results to the lapse rate used for the temperature correction. We also evaluate the impact of the EC method on the climate simulated by the ESM and find minor cooling over the Greenland ice sheet and Barents and Greenland seas, which compensates for a warm bias in the ESM due to topographic smoothing. Based on our diagnostic procedure to evaluate the EC method, we make several recommendations for future implementations. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
R. Sellevold L. van Kampenhout J. T. M. Lenaerts B. Noël W. H. Lipscomb M. Vizcaino |
author_facet |
R. Sellevold L. van Kampenhout J. T. M. Lenaerts B. Noël W. H. Lipscomb M. Vizcaino |
author_sort |
R. Sellevold |
title |
Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet |
title_short |
Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet |
title_full |
Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet |
title_fullStr |
Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet |
title_full_unstemmed |
Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet |
title_sort |
surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an earth system model: application to the greenland ice sheet |
publisher |
Copernicus Publications |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019 https://www.the-cryosphere.net/13/3193/2019/tc-13-3193-2019.pdf https://doaj.org/article/ea3afcb83c9946ce86b1ff7aba67e505 |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
Greenland Ice Sheet The Cryosphere |
genre_facet |
Greenland Ice Sheet The Cryosphere |
op_source |
The Cryosphere, Vol 13, Pp 3193-3208 (2019) |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019 1994-0416 1994-0424 https://www.the-cryosphere.net/13/3193/2019/tc-13-3193-2019.pdf https://doaj.org/article/ea3afcb83c9946ce86b1ff7aba67e505 |
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undefined |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019 |
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The Cryosphere |
container_volume |
13 |
container_issue |
12 |
container_start_page |
3193 |
op_container_end_page |
3208 |
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