West Antarctica as a Natural Laboratory for Cloud Microphysics

• Main Author: Wilson, Alexis
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Antarctic; West Antarctica; West Antarctic Ice Sheet; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s60635g2

honors thesis College of Science Physics and Astronomy Anil Seth Clouds contribute to energy regulation in the global climate system. Remote and unaffected by local pollution sources, Antarctica offers a unique laboratory to study clouds and their influence on the surface energy budget. The study of these clouds is particularly interesting as global temperatures increase and ice sheets begin to melt. As solar radiation travels to the surface of Earth, clouds over Antarctica absorb and scatter that radiation. Such extinction of radiation depends certain physical properties of the cloud, including the thermodynamic phase (whether the cloud consists of ice crystals, liquid water droplets, or a mixture of both), cloud base height, optical depth, and effective cloud particle radius. In this thesis, I present analysis of data from active and passive remote senors deployed at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet during the 2015-2016 summer field season. Cloud microphysical quantities are retrieved via differential analysis of solar spectra in addition to a numerical radiative transfer model. These parameters have never been examined in this way on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and their values will be essential to understanding how clouds over the West Antarctic ice sheet influence our changing global climate.