Radiative effects of secondary ice enhancement in coastal Antarctic clouds

International audience Secondary ice production (SIP) commonly occurs in coastal Antarctic stratocumulus, affecting their ice number concentrations (N ice ) and radiative properties. However, SIP is poorly understood and crudely parametrized in models. By evaluating how well SIP is captured in a clo...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Young, Gillian, Lachlan-Cope, T., O'Shea, S. J., Dearden, C., Listowski, Constantino, Bower, K. N., Choularton, T. W., Gallagher, M. W.
Other Authors: British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), School of Earth and Environmental Sciences Manchester (SEES), University of Manchester Manchester, Centre of Excellence for Modelling the Atmosphere and Climate (CEMAC), School of Earth and Environment Leeds (SEE), University of Leeds-University of Leeds, SPACE - LATMOS, Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences Manchester (SEAES)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: HAL CCSD 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://insu.hal.science/insu-02042380
https://insu.hal.science/insu-02042380/document
https://insu.hal.science/insu-02042380/file/2018GL080551.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL080551
Description
Summary:International audience Secondary ice production (SIP) commonly occurs in coastal Antarctic stratocumulus, affecting their ice number concentrations (N ice ) and radiative properties. However, SIP is poorly understood and crudely parametrized in models. By evaluating how well SIP is captured in a cloud‐resolving model, with a high resolution nest within a parent domain, we test how an improved comparison with aircraft observations affects the modelled cloud radiative properties. Under the assumption that primary ice is suitably represented by the model, we must enhance SIP by up to an order of magnitude to simulate observed N ice . Over the nest, a surface warming trend accompanied the SIP increase; however, this trend was not captured by the parent domain over the same region. Our results suggest that the radiative properties of microphysical features resolved in high resolution nested domains may not be captured by coarser domains, with implications for large‐scale radiative balance studies over the Antarctic continent.