ALBERT

Description: An overview is presented of the factors associated with snowfall over the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The flux of atmospheric moisture across the coast, the synoptic processes over the South Pacific Ocean, the large scale atmospheric controls, and numerical modeling of the West Antarctic environment are all discussed. Suggestions are made for research needed to substantially upgrade the status of knowledge in these closely interrelated topic areas.

Description: We combined an ensemble of satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets using common geographical regions, time intervals, and models of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment to estimate the mass balance of Earth's polar ice sheets. We find that there is good agreement between different satellite methods-especially in Greenland and West Antarctica-and that combining satellite data sets leads to greater certainty. Between 1992 and 2011, the ice sheets of Greenland, East Antarctica, West Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula changed in mass by -142 plus or minus 49, +14 plus or minus 43, -65 plus or minus 26, and -20 plus or minus 14 gigatonnes year(sup 1), respectively. Since 1992, the polar ice sheets have contributed, on average, 0.59 plus or minus 0.20 millimeter year(sup 1) to the rate of global sea-level rise.

Description: Precipitation over the Arctic Ocean has a significant impact on the basin-scale freshwater and energy budgets but is one of the most poorly constrained variables in atmospheric reanalyses. Precipitation controls the snow cover on sea ice, which impedes the exchange of energy between the ocean and atmosphere, inhibiting sea ice growth. Thus, accurate precipitation amounts are needed to inform sea ice modeling, especially for the production of thickness estimates from satellite altimetry freeboard data. However, obtaining a quantitative estimate of the precipitation distribution in the Arctic is notoriously difficult because of a number of factors, including a lack of reliable, long-term in situ observations; difficulties in remote sensing over sea ice; and model biases in temperature and moisture fields and associated uncertainty of modeled cloud microphysical processes in the polar regions. Here, we compare precipitation estimates over the Arctic Ocean from eight widely used atmospheric reanalyses over the period 200016 (nominally the new Arctic). We find that the magnitude, frequency, and phase of precipitation vary drastically, although interannual variability is similar. Reanalysis-derived precipitation does not increase with time as expected; however, an increasing trend of higher fractions of liquid precipitation (rainfall) is found. When compared with drifting ice mass balance buoys, three reanalyses (ERA-Interim, MERRA, and NCEP R2) produce realistic magnitudes and temporal agreement with observed precipitation events, while two products [MERRA, version 2 (MERRA-2), and CFSR] show large, implausible magnitudes in precipitation events. All the reanalyses tend to produce overly frequent Arctic precipitation. Future work needs to be undertaken to determine the specific factors in reanalyses that contribute to these discrepancies in the new Arctic.

Description: A combined observational and modeling study considers the linkage between Antarctic sea ice and the climate of non-local latitudes. The observational component is based upon analyses of monthly station observations and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Reanalysis (NNR). The modeling component consists of simulations of the NCAR Community Climate Model versions 2 (CCM2) and 3 (CCM3) and the recent Community Atmosphere Model (CAM2). A convenient mechanism for communication between the Antarctic region (particularly the Ross Sea area) and the tropics and Northern Hemisphere is examined. The first evidence of this teleconnection came from CCM2 simulations performed during an earlier NASA supported project. Annual-cycle simulations with and without Antarctic sea ice show statistically- significant responses in monsoon precipitation over central and northern China during the month of September. The changes in monsoon precipitation are physically consistent with an intensified southwest Pacific (Northern Hemisphere) subtropical high in response to all Antarctic sea ice being removed and replaced with open water at -1.9"C. The intensified high is the northernmost component of three primary anomalies. The southernmost anomaly includes the Ross Sea area, where sea ice has been removed. An earlier study by Peng and Domros had also found a link between Antarctic sea ice and the East Asian monsoon circulation. The current project has helped to understand the teleconnection.

Description: The National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate Model Version 1 (CCM1's) simulation of the modern arctic climate is evaluated by comparing a five-year seasonal cycle simulation with the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) global analyses. The sea level pressure (SLP), storm tracks, vertical cross section of height, 500-hPa height, total energy budget, and moisture budget are analyzed to investigate the biases in the simulated arctic climate. The results show that the model simulates anomalously low SLP, too much storm activity, and anomalously strong baroclinicity to the west of Greenland and vice versa to the east of Greenland. This bias is mainly attributed to the model's topographic representation of Greenland. First, the broadened Greenland topography in the model distorts the path of cyclone waves over the North Atlantic Ocean. Second, the model oversimulates the ridge over Greenland, which intensifies its blocking effect and steers the cyclone waves clockwise around it and hence produces an artificial circum-Greenland trough. These biases are significantly alleviated when the horizontal resolution increases to T42. Over the Arctic basin, the model simulates large amounts of low-level (stratus) clouds in winter and almost no stratus in summer, which is opposite to the observations. This bias is mainly due to the location of the simulated SLP features and the negative anomaly of storm activity, which prevent the transport of moisture into this region during summer but favor this transport in winter. The moisture budget analysis shows that the model's net annual precipitation (P-E) between 70 deg N and the North Pole is 6.6 times larger than the observations and the model transports six times more moisture into this region. The bias in the advection term is attributed to the positive moisture fixer scheme and the distorted flow pattern. However, the excessive moisture transport into the Arctic basin does not solely result from the advection term. The contribution by the moisture fixer is as large as from advection. By contrast, the semi-Lagrangian transport scheme used in the CCM2 significantly improves the moisture simulation for this region; however, globally the error is as serious as for the positive moisture fixer scheme. Finally, because the model has such serious problems in simulating the present arctic climate, its simulations of past and future climate change for this region are questionable.

Description: The ability of the NCAR Community Climate Model Version 1 (CCM1) with R 15 resolution to simulate the present-day climate of Antarctica was evaluated using the five-year seasonal cycle output produced by the CCM1 and comparing the model results with observed horizontal syntheses and point data. The results showed that the CCM1 with R 15 resolution can simulate to some extent the dynamics of Antarctic climate on the synoptic scale as well as some mesoscale features. The model can also simulate the phase and the amplitude of the annual and semiannual variation of the temperature, sea level pressure, and zonally averaged zonal (E-W) wind. The main shortcomings of the CCM1 model are associated with the model's anomalously large precipitation amounts at high latitudes, due to the tendency of the scheme to suppress negative moisture values.

Description: The Antarctic topography and attendant katabatic wind regime appear to play a key role in the climate of the high southern latitudes. During the nonsummer months, persistent and often times intense katabatic winds occur in the lowest few hundred meters of the Antarctic atmosphere. These slope flows transport significant amounts of cold air northward and thereby modify the horizontal pressure field over the high southern latitudes. Three-year seasonal cycle numerical simulations using the NCAR Community Climate Model Version 1 (CCM1) with and without representation of the Antarctic orography were performed to explore the role of the elevated terrain and drainage flows on the distribution and evolution of the horizontal pressure field. The katabatic wind regime is an important part of a clearly defined mean meridional circulation in the high southern latitudes. The position and intensity of the attendant sea level low pressure belt appears to be tied to the Antarctic orography. The seasonal movement of mass in the high southern latitudes is therefore constrained by the presence of the Antarctic ice sheet. The semiannual oscillation of pressure over Antarctica and the high southern latitutdes is well depicted in the CCM1 only when the Antarctic orography is included.

Description: The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) community climate model version 2 (CCM2) simulation of the circumpolar trough, surface air temperature, the polar vortex, cloudiness, winds, and atmospheric moisture and energy budgets are examined to validate the model's representation of the present-day Antarctic climate. The results show that the CCM2 can well simulate many important climate features over Antarctica, such as the location and intensity of the circumpolar trough, the coreless winter over the plateau, the intensity and horizontal distribution of the surface inversion, the speed and streamline pattern of the katabatic winds, the double jet stream feature over the southern Indian and Pacific oceans, and the arid climate over the continent. However, there are also some serious errors in the model. Some are due to old problems but some are caused by the new parameterizations in the model. The model errors over high southern latitudes can be summarized as follows: The circumpolar trough, the polar vertex, and the westerlies in midlatitudes are too strong; the semiannual cycle of the circumpolar trough is distorted compared to the observations; the low centers of the circumpolar trough and the troughs in the middle and upper troposphere are shifted eastward by 15 deg - 40 deg longitude; the surface temperatures are too cold over the plateau in summer and over the coastline in winter; the polar tropopause continues to have a cold bias; and the cloudiness is too high over the continent. These biases are induced by two major factors: (1) the cloud optical properties in tropical and middle latitudes, which cause the eastward shift of troughs and surface low centers and the error in the semiannual cycle, and (2) the cold bias of the surface air temperature, which is attributed to the oversimulation of cloudiness over the continent, especially during summer, and the uniform 2-m-thick sea ice. The constant thickness of sea ice suppresses the energy flux from the ocean to the atmosphere and hence reduces the air temperature near the coast during winter. Finally, although the simulated Antarctic climate still suffers these biases, the overall performance of the CCM2 is much better than that of the CCM1-T42. Therefore the CCM2 is good enough to be used for climate change studies, especially over Antarctica.

Description: The meteorology of high southern latitudes during winter is simulated using a cloud-free version of The Pennsylvania State University-National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Model version 4 (MM4) with a 100-km horizontal resolution. Comparisons between idealized simulations of Antarctic with MM4 and with the mesoscale model of Parish and Waight reveal that both models produce similarly realistic velocity fields in the boundary layer. The latter model tends to produce slightly faster drainage winds over East Antarctica. The intensity of the katabatic winds produced by MM4 is sensitive to parameterizations of boundary layer fluxes. Two simulations performed with MM4 using analyses from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for June 1988 as initial and boundary conditions. A simulation of the period from 000 UTC 2 June to 0000 UTC 8 June produces realistic synoptic phenomena including ridge development over East Antarctica, frontogenesis over the Amundsen Sea, and a katabatic surge over the Ross Ice Shelf. The simulated time-averaged fields for June 1988, particularly that of a 500-hPa height, are in good agreement with time-averaged fields analyzed by the ECMWF. The results of the simulations provide detailed features of the Antarctic winter boundary layer along the steeply sloping terrain. Highest boundary layer wind speeds averaged over the month-long simulation are approximately 20 m/s. The lack of latent heating in the simulations apparently results in some bias in the results. In particular, the cloud-free version of MM4 underpredicts the intensity of lows in the sea level pressure field.

Description: Observations of precipitation over Greenland are limited. Direct precipitation measurements for the whole ice sheet are impractical, and those in the coastal region have substantial uncertainty but may be correctable with some effort. However, the analyzed wind, geopotential height and moisture fields are available for recent years, and the precipitation is retrievable from these fields by a dynamic method. Based on recent Greenland precipitation from dynamic studies, several deficiencies in the precipitation spatial distributions from these dynamic methods were evaluated by Bromwich et al.