The Cryosphere
The Cryosphere
TC
Articles | Volume 15, issue 2
Articles | Volume 15, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1065-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1065-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 15, issue 2
Research article
 | 
01 Mar 2021
Research article |  | 01 Mar 2021

Physics-based SNOWPACK model improves representation of near-surface Antarctic snow and firn density

Eric Keenan, Nander Wever, Marissa Dattler, Jan T. M. Lenaerts, Brooke Medley, Peter Kuipers Munneke, and Carleen Reijmer

Data sets

Surface Mass Balance and Snow Depth on Sea Ice Working Group (SUMup) snow density subdataset, Greenland and Antartica, 1950-2018 Lora Koenig and Lynn Montgomery https://doi.org/10.18739/A26D5PB2S

EricKeenan/Keenan_et_al_2020_TC: Paper scripts (Version v1.0.0) Eric Keenan https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4560829

EricKeenan/download_MERRA2: Download MERRA-2 (Version v1.0.0) Eric Keenan https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4560825

Model code and software

snowpack-model/snowpack: c1e5cd7 (Version c1e5cd7) SNOWPACK team https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3891846

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Short summary
Snow density is required to convert observed changes in ice sheet volume into mass, which ultimately drives ice sheet contribution to sea level rise. However, snow properties respond dynamically to wind-driven redistribution. Here we include a new wind-driven snow density scheme into an existing snow model. Our results demonstrate an improved representation of snow density when compared to observations and can therefore be used to improve retrievals of ice sheet mass balance.
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