Sensitivity of the surface energy budget to drifting snow as simulated by MAR in coastal Adelie Land, Antarctica

Le Toumelin, Louis; Amory, Charles; Favier, Vincent; Kittel, Christoph; Hofer, Stefan; Fettweis, Xavier; Gallée, Hubert; Kayetha, Vinay

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3595-2021

Articles | Volume 15, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3595-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3595-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 8

Research article

|

03 Aug 2021

Research article |

| 03 Aug 2021

Sensitivity of the surface energy budget to drifting snow as simulated by MAR in coastal Adelie Land, Antarctica

Louis Le Toumelin, Charles Amory, Vincent Favier, Christoph Kittel, Stefan Hofer, Xavier Fettweis, Hubert Gallée, and Vinay Kayetha

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3595-2021-supplement

Data sets

Radiation data (2014-2019) at D17 (Adelie Land, East Antarctica) Amory, Charles, Le Toumelin, Louis, Favier, Vincent, and Genthon, Christophe https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4139737

A drifting snow data set (2010-2018) from coastal Adelie Land, Eastern Antarctica Christophe Genthon; Vincent Favier and Charles Amory https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3630497

Short summary

Snow is frequently eroded from the surface by the wind in Adelie Land (Antarctica) and suspended in the lower atmosphere. By performing model simulations, we show firstly that suspended snow layers interact with incoming radiation similarly to a near-surface cloud. Secondly, suspended snow modifies the atmosphere's thermodynamic structure and energy exchanges with the surface. Our results suggest snow transport by the wind should be taken into account in future model studies over the region.