Evaluation of a new snow albedo scheme for the Greenland ice sheet in the Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO2)

van Dalum, Christiaan T.; van de Berg, Willem Jan; Lhermitte, Stef; van den Broeke, Michiel R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3645-2020

TC | Articles | Volume 14, issue 11

The Cryosphere, 14, 3645–3662, 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3645-2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

TC | Articles | Volume 14, issue 11

Research article 04 Nov 2020

Research article | 04 Nov 2020

Evaluation of a new snow albedo scheme for the Greenland ice sheet in the Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO2)

Christiaan T. van Dalum et al.

Data sets

RACMO2.3p3 monthly-accumulated shortwave radiation data for Greenland (September 2000–2018) C. T. van Dalum, W. J. van de Berg, and M. R. van den Broeke https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3763442

Short summary

The reflectivity of sunlight, which is also known as albedo, is often inadequately modeled in regional climate models. Therefore, we have implemented a new snow and ice albedo scheme in the regional climate model RACMO2. In this study, we evaluate a new RACMO2 version for the Greenland ice sheet by using observations and the previous model version. RACMO2 output compares well with observations, and by including new processes we improve the ability of RACMO2 to make future climate projections.

The reflectivity of sunlight, which is also known as albedo, is often inadequately modeled in...