The regional influence of the Arctic Oscillation and Arctic Dipole on the wintertime Arctic surface radiation budget and sea ice growth

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (9) ◽  
pp. 4341-4350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley M. Hegyi ◽  
Patrick C. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Arctic Oscillation ◽  
Surface Radiation ◽  
Radiation Budget ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Ice Growth ◽  
Surface Radiation Budget ◽  
Regional Influence ◽  
The Arctic Oscillation ◽  
Arctic Surface

scholarly journals Clouds damp the radiative impacts of polar sea ice loss

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 2673-2686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramdane Alkama ◽  
Patrick C. Taylor ◽  
Lorea Garcia-San Martin ◽  
Herve Douville ◽  
Gregory Duveiller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Surface Radiation ◽  
Radiation Budget ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Cloud Properties ◽  
Surface Radiation Budget ◽  
Cloud Radiative Effect ◽  
Radiative Impact ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Clouds play an important role in the climate system: (1) cooling Earth by reflecting incoming sunlight to space and (2) warming Earth by reducing thermal energy loss to space. Cloud radiative effects are especially important in polar regions and have the potential to significantly alter the impact of sea ice decline on the surface radiation budget. Using CERES (Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System) data and 32 CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) climate models, we quantify the influence of polar clouds on the radiative impact of polar sea ice variability. Our results show that the cloud short-wave cooling effect strongly influences the impact of sea ice variability on the surface radiation budget and does so in a counter-intuitive manner over the polar seas: years with less sea ice and a larger net surface radiative flux show a more negative cloud radiative effect. Our results indicate that 66±2% of this change in the net cloud radiative effect is due to the reduction in surface albedo and that the remaining 34±1 % is due to an increase in cloud cover and optical thickness. The overall cloud radiative damping effect is 56±2 % over the Antarctic and 47±3 % over the Arctic. Thus, present-day cloud properties significantly reduce the net radiative impact of sea ice loss on the Arctic and Antarctic surface radiation budgets. As a result, climate models must accurately represent present-day polar cloud properties in order to capture the surface radiation budget impact of polar sea ice loss and thus the surface albedo feedback.

scholarly journals Sunlight, clouds, sea ice, albedo, and the radiative budget: the umbrella versus the blanket

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2159-2165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald K. Perovich
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Surface Albedo ◽  
Radiative Heat ◽  
Radiation Flux ◽  
Surface Radiation ◽  
Radiation Budget ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Net Radiation ◽  
Ice Melt ◽  
Surface Radiation Budget

Abstract. The surface radiation budget of the Arctic Ocean plays a central role in summer ice melt and is governed by clouds and surface albedo. I calculated the net radiation flux for a range of albedos under sunny and cloudy skies and determined the break-even value, where the net radiation is the same for cloudy and sunny skies. Break-even albedos range from 0.30 in September to 0.58 in July. For snow-covered or bare ice, sunny skies always result in less radiative heat input. In contrast, leads always have, and ponds usually have, more radiative input under sunny skies than cloudy skies. Snow-covered ice has a net radiation flux that is negative or near zero under sunny skies, resulting in radiative cooling. Areally averaged albedos for sea ice in July result in a smaller net radiation flux under cloudy skies. For May, June, August, and September, the net radiation is smaller under sunny skies.

scholarly journals Snowfall distribution and its response to the Arctic Oscillation: an evaluation of HighResMIP models in the Arctic using CPR/CloudSat observations

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 3759-3772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manu Anna Thomas ◽  
Abhay Devasthale ◽  
Tristan L'Ecuyer ◽  
Shiyu Wang ◽  
Torben Koenigk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
General Circulation ◽  
Arctic Oscillation ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
General Circulation Models ◽  
Specific Pattern ◽  
Surface Radiation ◽  
Radiation Budget ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
The Arctic Oscillation

Abstract. A realistic representation of snowfall in general circulation models (GCMs) of global climate is important to accurately simulate snow cover, surface albedo, high-latitude precipitation and thus the surface radiation budget. Hence, in this study, we evaluate snowfall in a range of climate models run at two different resolutions by comparing to the latest estimates of snowfall from the CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar over the northern latitudes. We also evaluate whether the finer-resolution versions of the GCMs simulate the accumulated snowfall better than their coarse-resolution counterparts. As the Arctic Oscillation (AO) is the prominent mode of natural variability in the polar latitudes, the snowfall variability associated with the different phases of the AO is examined in both models and in our observational reference. We report that the statistical distributions of snowfall differ considerably between the models and CloudSat observations. While CloudSat shows an exponential distribution of snowfall, the models show a Gaussian distribution that is heavily positively skewed. As a result, the 10th and 50th percentiles, representing the light and median snowfall, are overestimated by up to factors of 3 and 1.5, respectively, in the models investigated here. The overestimations are strongest during the winter months compared to autumn and spring. The extreme snowfall represented by the 90th percentiles, on the other hand, is positively skewed, underestimating the snowfall estimates by up to a factor of 2 in the models in winter compared to the CloudSat estimates. Though some regional improvements can be seen with increased spatial resolution within a particular model, it is not easy to identify a specific pattern that holds across all models. The characteristic snowfall variability associated with the positive phase of AO over Greenland Sea and central Eurasian Arctic is well captured by the models.

scholarly journals Coastal Erosion Variability at the Southern Laptev Sea Linked to Winter Sea Ice and the Arctic Oscillation

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Marcolino Nielsen ◽  
Mikhail Dobrynin ◽  
Johanna Baehr ◽  
Sergey Razumov ◽  
Mikhail Grigoriev
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Coastal Erosion ◽  
Arctic Oscillation ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Laptev Sea ◽  
The Arctic Oscillation

Response of Sea Ice to the Arctic Oscillation

2002 ◽  
Vol 15 (18) ◽  
pp. 2648-2663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignatius G. Rigor ◽  
John M. Wallace ◽  
Roger L. Colony
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Arctic Oscillation ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
The Arctic Oscillation

scholarly journals Arctic Clouds and Surface Radiation – a critical comparison of satellite retrievals and the ERA-Interim reanalysis

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 6667-6677 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Zygmuntowska ◽  
T. Mauritsen ◽  
J. Quaas ◽  
L. Kaleschke
Keyword(s):  
Surface Radiation ◽  
Radiation Budget ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Radiative Effect ◽  
Arctic Clouds ◽  
Cloud Radiative Effect ◽  
Satellite Retrievals ◽  
Earth’S Radiation Budget ◽  
Arctic Surface

Abstract. Clouds regulate the Earth's radiation budget, both by reflecting part of the incoming sunlight leading to cooling and by absorbing and emitting infrared radiation which tends to have a warming effect. Globally averaged, at the top of the atmosphere the cloud radiative effect is to cool the climate, while at the Arctic surface, clouds are thought to be warming. Here we compare a passive instrument, the AVHRR-based retrieval from CM-SAF, with recently launched active instruments onboard CloudSat and CALIPSO and the widely used ERA-Interim reanalysis. We find that in particular in winter months the three data sets differ significantly. While passive satellite instruments have serious difficulties, detecting only half the cloudiness of the modeled clouds in the reanalysis, the active instruments are in between. In summer, the two satellite products agree having monthly means of 70–80 percent, but the reanalysis are approximately ten percent higher. The monthly mean long- and shortwave components of the surface cloud radiative effect obtained from the ERA-Interim reanalysis are about twice that calculated on the basis of CloudSat's radar-only retrievals, while ground based measurements from SHEBA are in between. We discuss these differences in terms of instrument-, retrieval- and reanalysis characteristics, which differ substantially between the analyzed datasets.

scholarly journals Development and evaluation of surface shortwave flux parameterizations for use in sea-ice models

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 33-37
Author(s):  
Jeffrey R. Key ◽  
Yong Liu ◽  
Robert S. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Surface Radiation ◽  
Radiation Budget ◽  
Shortwave Radiation ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Polar Regions ◽  
Computationally Efficient ◽  
Using Data ◽  
One Year ◽  
Mean Square Errors

The surface radiation budget of the polar regions strongly influences ice growth and melt. Thermodynamic sea-ice models therefore require accurate yet computationally efficient methods of computing radiative fluxes. In this paper a new parameterization of the downwelling shortwave radiation flux at the Arctic surface is developed and compared to a variety of existing schemes. Parameterized llnxes are compared to in situ measurements using data for one year at Barrow, Alaska. Our results show that the new parameterization can estimate the downwelling shortwave flux with mean and root mean square errors of 1 and 5%, respectively, for clear conditions and 5 and 20% for cloudy conditions. The new parameterization offers a unified approach to estimating downwelling shortwave fluxes under clear and cloudy conditions, and is more accurate than existing schemes.

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