The Cryosphere
The Cryosphere
TC
Articles | Volume 15, issue 2
Articles | Volume 15, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-883-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-883-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 15, issue 2
Research article
 | 
19 Feb 2021
Research article |  | 19 Feb 2021

Trends and spatial variation in rain-on-snow events over the Arctic Ocean during the early melt season

Tingfeng Dou, Cunde Xiao, Jiping Liu, Qiang Wang, Shifeng Pan, Jie Su, Xiaojun Yuan, Minghu Ding, Feng Zhang, Kai Xue, Peter A. Bieniek, and Hajo Eicken

Data sets

MERRA: NASA's Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (https://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?page=1&keywords=merra) M. M. Rienecker, M. J. Suarez, R. Gelaro, et al. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00015.1

The JRA-55 Reanalysis: General specifications and basic characteristics (https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/jra-55) S. Kobayashi, Y. Ota, Y. Harada, et al. https://doi.org/10.2151/jmsj.2015-001

ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system (https://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-daily/levtype=sfc/) D. P. Dee, S. M. Uppala, A. J. Simmons, et al. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.828

ACIS Daily Data Browser Alaska Climate Research Center http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/acis_data

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Short summary
Rain-on-snow (ROS) events can accelerate the surface ablation of sea ice, greatly influencing the ice–albedo feedback. We found that spring ROS events have shifted to earlier dates over the Arctic Ocean in recent decades, which is correlated with sea ice melt onset in the Pacific sector and most Eurasian marginal seas. There has been a clear transition from solid to liquid precipitation, leading to a reduction in spring snow depth on sea ice by more than −0.5 cm per decade since the 1980s.
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