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Case Study of Blowing Snow Impacts on the Antarctic Peninsula Lower Atmosphere and Surface Simulated With a Snow/Ice Enhanced WRF Model
Author(s) -
Luo Liping,
Zhang Jing,
Hock Regine,
Yao Yao
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8996
pISSN - 2169-897X
DOI - 10.1029/2020jd033936
Subject(s) - weather research and forecasting model , snow , environmental science , atmospheric sciences , longwave , climatology , latent heat , sea ice , sensible heat , cryosphere , ice albedo feedback , cyclone (programming language) , sea ice thickness , meteorology , geology , radiative transfer , geography , physics , quantum mechanics , field programmable gate array , computer science , computer hardware
To better capture the air‐snow‐ice interaction, a snow/ice enhanced Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF‐ice) model has been developed. This study examines the performance of WRF‐ice and its blowing snow component during a strong cyclone event from October 23 to 27, 2017 over the Antarctic Peninsula, which is characterized by a synoptic cyclone crossing the northern part of the Peninsula and an embodied mesoscale cyclone over the Weddell Sea. Evolution of the cyclone is accurately reproduced in the 5‐km resolution WRF‐ice simulation, and the simulated near‐surface conditions agree well with station and satellite observations. Numerical simulations show that the process of blowing snow sublimation can be prominent within the lower atmosphere when the air is dry, and produces moistening and cooling effects. Over relatively warm and humid areas, cloud enhancement by blowing snow can lead to either colder or warmer surfaces because of competing effects of longwave and shortwave cloud radiative forcings. In particular, additional moisture from blowing snow sublimation can slightly intensify precipitation over the mountains. Surface energy budget analysis indicates that absorbed shortwave ( S a ), incoming longwave ( L d ), and outgoing longwave ( L u ) are dominant components of surface energy budget. When increases in L d , L u , and sensible heat flux are combined with decreases in S a and latent heat flux due to blowing snow effects, a negative surface net heat flux (∼0.5 W/m 2 ) occurs during daytime. A positive domain‐total surface mass balance (∼0.43 Gt) is generated during the simulated cyclone event due to increases in precipitation, decreases in runoff, and decreases in sublimation.