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Evaluation of CloudSat's Cloud‐Profiling Radar for Mapping Snowfall Rates Across the Greenland Ice Sheet
Author(s) -
Ryan Jonathan C.,
Smith Laurence C.,
Wu Mengxi,
Cooley Sarah W.,
Miège Clément,
Montgomery Lynn N.,
Koenig Lora S.,
Fettweis Xavier,
Noel Brice P. Y.,
Broeke Michiel R.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8996
pISSN - 2169-897X
DOI - 10.1029/2019jd031411
Subject(s) - snow , greenland ice sheet , climatology , environmental science , ice sheet , cryosphere , climate model , glacier mass balance , climate change , atmospheric sciences , sea ice , physical geography , meteorology , geology , glacier , geography , oceanography
The Greenland Ice Sheet is now the single largest cryospheric contributor to global sea‐level rise yet uncertainty remains about its future contribution due to complex interactions between increasing snowfall and surface melt. Reducing uncertainty in future snowfall predictions requires sophisticated, physically based climate models evaluated with present‐day observations. The accuracy of modeled snowfall rates, however, has yet to be systematically assessed because observations are sparse. Here, we produce high spatial resolution (15 km) snowfall climatologies (2006–2016) derived from CloudSat's 2C‐SNOW‐PROFILE product to evaluate climate model simulations of snowfall across the Greenland Ice Sheet. In comparison to accumulation datasets acquired from ice cores and airborne accumulation radar, we find that our CloudSat climatologies capture broad spatial patterns of snowfall in both the accumulation and ablation zones. By comparing our CloudSat snowfall climatologies with the Regional Atmospheric Climate Model Version 2.3p2 (RACMO2.3p2), Modèle Atmosphérique Régional 3.9 (MAR3.9), ERA5, and Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1), we demonstrate that climate models likely overestimate snowfall rates at the margins of the ice sheet, particularly in South, Southeast, and Northwest Greenland during autumn and winter. Despite this overestimation, there are few areas of the ice sheet where the models and CloudSat substantially disagree about the spatial pattern and seasonality of snowfall rates. We conclude that a combination of CloudSat snowfall observations and the latest generation of climate models has the potential to improve understanding of how snowfall rates respond to increasing air temperatures, thereby constraining one of the largest sources of uncertainty in Greenland's future contribution to global sea levels.