The Cryosphere
The Cryosphere
TC
Articles | Volume 10, issue 6
Articles | Volume 10, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2589-2016
© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2589-2016
© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Articles | Volume 10, issue 6
Research article
 | 
03 Nov 2016
Research article |  | 03 Nov 2016

Frequency and distribution of winter melt events from passive microwave satellite data in the pan-Arctic, 1988–2013

Libo Wang, Peter Toose, Ross Brown, and Chris Derksen

Data sets

PMW R. L. Armstrong, K. W. Knowles, M. J. Brodzik, and M. A. Hardman: http://nsidc.org/data/NSIDC-0032

ERA-Interim D. P. Dee, S. M. Uppala, A. J. Simmons, P. Berrisford, P. Poli, S., Kobayashi, and F. Vitart http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-daily/levtype=sfc/

MERRA M. M. Rienecker, M. J. Suarez, R. Gelaro, R. Todling, J. Bacmeister, E. Liu, M. G. Bosilovich, S. G. Schubert, L. Takacs, G.-K. Kim, S. Bloom, J. Chen, D. Collins, A. Conaty, A. Silva, W. Gu, J. Joiner, R. D. Koster, R. Lucchesi, A. Molod, T. Owens, S. Pawson, P. Pegion, C. R. Redder, R. Reichle, F. R. Robertson, A. G. Ruddick, M. Sienkiewicz, and J. Woollen https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/nasa-merra

Weather Station Data Global Surface Summary of the Day dataset archived at the National Climate Data Center DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI https://data.noaa.gov/dataset/global-surface-summary-of-the-day-gsod

CRUTem4 P. D. Jones, D. H. Lister, T. J. Osborn, C. Harpham, M. Salmon, and C. P. Morice http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem4/

Surface-based Radiometer Environment Canada Data Catalogue http://donnees-data.intranet.ec.gc.ca/geonetwork/home/eng

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Short summary
The conventional wisdom is that Arctic warming will result in an increase in the frequency of winter melt events. However, results in this study show little evidence of trends in winter melt frequency over 1988–2013 period. The frequency of winter melt events is strongly influenced by the selection of the start and end dates of winter period, and a fixed-window method for analyzing winter melt events is observed to generate false increasing trends from a shift in the timing of snow cover season.
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