Ice clouds over Fairbanks, Alaska

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2014Arctic clouds have been recognized long ago as one of the key elements modulating the global climate system. They have gained much interest in recent years because the availability of new continuous datasets is opening doors to explore cloud and aerosol properties as never before. This is particularly important in the light of current climate change studies that predict changing weather scenarios around the world. This research investigates the occurrence and properties of a few types of ice clouds over the Arctic region with datasets available through the Arctic Facility for Atmospheric Remote Sensing (AFARS; 64.86° N, 147.84° W). This study exclusively focuses on ice clouds that form in the upper (cirrus clouds) and midlevels of the troposphere, and that are transparent to laser pulses (visible optical depth τ< 3.0 - 4.0). Cirrus clouds are icedominated clouds that are formed in the upper levels of the troposphere and are relatively thin such that their visual appearances range from bluish to gray in color. Mid-level ice clouds are those clouds primarily composed of ice crystals forming in the midlevels of the troposphere. It is hypothesized that unlike the basic midlevel cloud type (altostratus), other varieties of midlevel ice clouds exist at times over the Arctic region. The midlevel ice clouds studied here are also transparent to laser pulses and sometimes appear as a family of cirrus clouds to a surface observer. Because of their intermediate heights of occurrence in the troposphere, these could have microphysical properties and radiative effects that are distinct from those associated with upper level ice clouds in the troposphere. A ground-based lidar dataset with visual observations for identifying cloud types collected at AFARS over eight years is used to investigate this hypothesis. Cloud types over AFARS have been identified by a surface observer (Professor Kenneth Sassen) using established characteristics traits. Essential macrophysical properties of the clouds are derived from the lidar data, which serves as a climatological representation for the visually identified cirrus and mid-level ice clouds over a typical sub-Arctic location. Synoptic-scale weather patterns conducive for such cloud type formations are derived using a clustering technique applied to a re-analysis dataset. The cloud properties derived from ground-based lidar over AFARS are used to assess the cloud observations from the CALIPSO satellite.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Ice clouds over the AFARS site (64.86° N, 147.84° W) -- Chapter 3. Ice clouds over Fairbanks: influence of weather patterns -- Chapter 4. Ice clouds over Fairbanks: ground-based and satellite view -- Chapter 5. Conclusions -- References

Investigation of thin midlevel ice clouds in the Arctic using calipso data and radiative transfer modeling

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015In this research we investigate the global occurrence and properties of optically thin midlevel ice clouds. These clouds are difficult to detect with passive radiometric techniques and are under-represented in current studies. We use the Cloud Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) data set to identify thin midlevel ice clouds and determine their global occurrence and distribution. For the first time, we find that the global mean occurrence of these clouds is at least 4.5%, being at least 7.3% of all the tropospheric clouds detected at a horizontal scale of 10 km. Seasonally, these clouds are found most commonly in the polar regions. These clouds occur most commonly in the Arctic in winter and least commonly in the summer. In winter these clouds can occur up to 19% of the time. The occurrence of these clouds decreases with increasing spatial scale and are most commonly found at spatial scales of 25 km or less. We found five large distinct clouds over the Arctic and investigated them for their meteorological conditions and radiative effects. These thin midlevel ice clouds are formed along the frontal zones in weakly ascending air masses. Our model simulations show that thin midlevel ice clouds have a net warming effect on the surface of 23-48 W/m². We conclude that these clouds have a significant impact on the radiation budget in Arctic winters. Our study highlights the importance of active satellite-based remote sensing in globally detecting and characterizing optically thin clouds. Our estimates of occurrence and fraction of clouds represents a lower bound, as these clouds can be obscured by optically thicker clouds. The volume of measurements provided by the satellite allowed us to identify a small but consistent set of large clouds with which we could conduct a contemporary radiative analysis. These findings can be used to improve the representation of clouds and their impacts in regional and global climate models

New Perspectives on Blowing Snow in Antarctica and Implications for Ice Sheet Mass Balance

Blowing snow processes commonly occur over the earth’s ice sheets and snow covered regions when near surface wind speed exceeds a threshold value. These processes play a key role in the sublimation and redistribution of snow, thereby influencing the surface mass balance. Prior field studies and modeling results have shown the importance of blowing snow sublimation and transport on the surface mass budget and hydrological cycle of high latitude regions. Until recently, most of our knowledge of blowing snow was obtained from field measurements or modeling. Recent advances in satellite remote sensing have enabled a more complete understanding of the nature of blowing snow. Using 12 years of satellite lidar data, climatology of blowing snow frequency has been compiled, showing the spatial and temporal distribution of blowing snow frequency over Antarctica. Other characteristics of blowing snow such as backscatter structure and profiles of temperature, relative humidity, and winds through the layer are explored. A new technique that uses direct measurements of blowing snow backscatter combined with model meteorological reanalysis fields to compute the magnitude of blowing snow sublimation and transport is also discussed

Insight into the Thermodynamic Structure of Blowing Snow Layers in Antarctica from Dropsonde and CALIPSO Measurements

Blowing snow is a frequent and ubiquitous phenomenon over most over Antarctica. The transport and sublimation of blowing snow are important for the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet and the latter is a major contributor to the hydrological cycle in high latitude regions. While much is known about blowing snow from surface observations, our knowledge of the thermodynamic structure of deep blowing snow layers is lacking. Here dropsonde measurements are used to investigate the temperature, moisture and wind structure of deep blowing snow layers over Antarctica. The temperature lapse rate within the blowing snow layer is found to be at times close to dry adiabatic and on average between dry and moist adiabatic. Initiation of blowing snow causes the surface temperature to increase to a degree proportional to the depth of the blowing snow layer. The relative humidity is generally largest near the surface (but less than 100%) and decreases with height reaching a minimum near the top of the layer. These findings are at odds with accepted theory which assumes blowing snow sublimation will cool and eventually saturate the layer. The observations support the conclusion that high levels of wind shear induced turbulence causes mixing and entrainment of warmer and drier air from above the blowing snow layer which suppresses humidity and produces the observed well-mixed temperature structure within the layer. The results may have important consequences for Antarctic ice sheet mass balance and the moisture budget of the atmosphere in high latitudes

New Perspectives on Blowing Snow Transport, Sublimation, and Layer Thermodynamic Structure over Antarctica

Blowing snow over Antarctica is a widespread and frequent event. Satellite remote sensing using lidar has shown that blowing snow occurs over 70% of the time over large areas of Antarctica in winter. The transport and sublimation of blowing snow are important terms in the ice sheet mass balance equation and the latter is also an important part of the hydrological cycle. Until now the only way to estimate the magnitude of these processes was through model parameterization. We present a technique that uses direct satellite observations of blowing snow and model (MERRA-2) temperature and humidity fields to compute both transport and sublimation of blowing snow over Antarctica for the period 2006 to 2016. The results show a larger annual continent-wide integrated sublimation than current published estimates and a significant transport of snow from continent to ocean. The talk will also include the lidar backscatter structure of blowing snow layers that often reach heights of 200 to 300 m as well as the first dropsonde measurements of temperature, moisture and wind through blowing snow layers

Toward a Satellite-Derived Climatology of Blowing Snow Over Antarctica

Satellite lidar remote sensing of the atmosphere has been ongoing for more than a decade providing the opportunity to study atmospheric processes in great detail. Here we use 12 years of CloudAerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization measurements to derive a climatology of blowing snow layer height, optical depth, and frequency over Antarctica for the period 20062017. Limited to the vertical resolution of the CloudAerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization data, our climatology includes all blowing snow layers greater than about 30 m in thickness for clear or optically thin cloud regions. Our results show that blowing snow occurs over 50% of the time over large regions with frequencies often exceeding 70%. The overall pattern of blowing snow frequency is fairly consistent from year to year, but there are regional differences. We examined the data for temporal trends in blowing snow properties and found significant trends only in blowing snow frequency. A small area of East Antarctica with generally low blowing snow frequency shows a statistically significant increase in blowing snow frequency ranging from 10% to 100% per decade. No significant trends in frequency were found in regions of high (>50%) blowing snow frequency, and only isolated small areas exhibited a decrease in frequency through the study period

Blowing Snow Sublimation and Transport over Antarctica from 11 Years of CALIPSO Observations

Blowing snow processes commonly occur over the earth's ice sheets when the 10 mile wind speed exceeds a threshold value. These processes play a key role in the sublimation and redistribution of snow thereby influencing the surface mass balance. Prior field studies and modeling results have shown the importance of blowing snow sublimation and transport on the surface mass budget and hydrological cycle of high-latitude regions. For the first time, we present continent-wide estimates of blowing snow sublimation and transport over Antarctica for the period 2006-2016 based on direct observation of blowing snow events. We use an improved version of the blowing snow detection algorithm developed for previous work that uses atmospheric backscatter measurements obtained from the CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) lidar aboard the CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation) satellite. The blowing snow events identified by CALIPSO and meteorological fields from MERRA-2 are used to compute the blowing snow sublimation and transport rates. Our results show that maximum sublimation occurs along and slightly inland of the coastline. This is contrary to the observed maximum blowing snow frequency which occurs over the interior. The associated temperature and moisture reanalysis fields likely contribute to the spatial distribution of the maximum sublimation values. However, the spatial pattern of the sublimation rate over Antarctica is consistent with modeling studies and precipitation estimates. Overall, our results show that the 2006-2016 Antarctica average integrated blowing snow sublimation is about 393 +/- 196 Gt yr(exp -1), which is considerably larger than previous model-derived estimates. We find maximum blowing snow transport amount of 5 Mt km-1 yr(exp -1) over parts of East Antarctica and estimate that the average snow transport from continent to ocean is about 3.7 Gt yr(exp -1). These continent-wide estimates are the first of their kind and can be used to help model and constrain the surface mass budget over Antarctica