Publication Date:
2017-10-17
Description:
The Arctic climate system includes numerous highly interactive small-scale physical processes in the atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean. During and since the International
Polar Year 2007–2009, significant advances have been made in understanding these processes. Here, these recent
advances are reviewed, synthesized, and discussed. In atmospheric
physics, the primary advances have been in cloud physics, radiative transfer, mesoscale cyclones, coastal, and
fjordic processes as well as in boundary layer processes and
surface fluxes. In sea ice and its snow cover, advances have
been made in understanding of the surface albedo and its relationships
with snow properties, the internal structure of sea ice, the heat and salt transfer in ice, the formation of superimposed ice and snow ice, and the small-scale dynamics of
sea ice. For the ocean, significant advances have been related
to exchange processes at the ice–ocean interface, diapycnal
mixing, double-diffusive convection, tidal currents and diurnal
resonance. Despite this recent progress, some of these
small-scale physical processes are still not sufficiently understood:
these include wave–turbulence interactions in the
atmosphere and ocean, the exchange of heat and salt at the
ice–ocean interface, and the mechanical weakening of sea
ice. Many other processes are reasonably well understood
as stand-alone processes but the challenge is to understand
their interactions with and impacts and feedbacks on other
processes. Uncertainty in the parameterization of small-scale
processes continues to be among the greatest challenges facing
climate modelling, particularly in high latitudes. Further
improvements in parameterization require new year-round
field campaigns on the Arctic sea ice, closely combined with
satellite remote sensing studies and numerical model experiments.
Repository Name:
EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
Type:
Article
,
isiRev
Format:
application/pdf
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