Climatology and surface impacts of atmospheric  rivers on West Antarctica

Maclennan, Michelle L.; Lenaerts, Jan T. M.; Shields, Christine A.; Hoffman, Andrew O.; Wever, Nander; Thompson-Munson, Megan; Winters, Andrew C.; Pettit, Erin C.; Scambos, Theodore A.; Wille, Jonathan D.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-865-2023

Articles | Volume 17, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-865-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-865-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 2

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

21 Feb 2023

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 21 Feb 2023

Climatology and surface impacts of atmospheric rivers on West Antarctica

Michelle L. Maclennan, Jan T. M. Lenaerts, Christine A. Shields, Andrew O. Hoffman, Nander Wever, Megan Thompson-Munson, Andrew C. Winters, Erin C. Pettit, Theodore A. Scambos, and Jonathan D. Wille

Data sets

SNOWPACK simulations for Thwaites Cavity and Channel AMIGOS sites in West Antarctica N. Wever and M.Thompson-Munson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7320237

AMIGOS-III Cavity and Channel Snow Height and Thermistor Snow Temperature Data T. Scambos https://doi.org/10.15784/601552

Vaisala WXT520 weather station data at the Cavity and Channel AMIGOS-III sites T. Scambos https://doi.org/10.15784/601549

MERRA-2 tavg1_2d_Ifo_Nx: 2d, 1-hourly, Time-Averaged, Single-Level, Assimilation, Land Surface Forcings V5.12.4 GMAO - Global Modeling and Assimilation Office https://doi.org/10.5067/L0T5GEG1NYFA

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1959 to present H. Hersbach, B. Bell, P. Berrisford, G. Biavati, A. Horányi, J. Muñoz Sabater, J. Nicolas, C. Peubey, R. Radu, I. Rozum, D. Schepers, A. Simmons, C. Soci, D. Dee, and J.-N. Thépaut https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

ARTMIP Tier-1 Catalogues J. J. Rutz, C. A. Shields, J. M. Lora, A. E. Payne, B. Guan, P. A. Ullrich, T. A., O'Brien, L. R. Leung, F. M. Ralph, M. F. Wehner, S. Brands, A. B. Marquardt~Collow, N. Goldenson, I. V. Gorodetskaya, H. Griffith, S. M. Hagos, K. Kashinath, B. Kawzenuk, H. Krishnan, V. Kurlin, D. Lavers, G. Magnusdottir, K. Mahoney, E. McClenny, G. Muszynski, M. D. Nguyen, Prabhat, Y. Qian, A. M. Ramos, C. Sarangi, S. Sellars, T. Shulgina, R. Tom, D. Waliser, D. Walton, G. Wick, A. M. Wilson, and M. Viale https://doi.org/10.5065/D62R3QFS

SNOWPACK simulations for Thwaites Cavity and Channel AMIGOS sites in West Antarctica N. Wever https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7320237

gnss-ir derived accumulation history at the GNSS sites LTHW, UTHW, and KHLR maintained by unavco and the polenet team A. Hoffman and K. Christianson http://hdl.handle.net/1773/48595

Model code and software

MeteoIO and SNOWPACK, License: GNU LHPLv3 WSL https://gitlabext.wsl.ch/snow-models/snowpack

snowpack-model/snowpack: 7afca63 (7afca63) N. Wever, E. Keenan, and snowpack-model https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7536784

snowpack-model/snowpack: 149c586 (149c586) N. Wever, E. Keenan, and snowpack-model https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7331794

thwaites-gnss-ir A. O. Hoffman https://github.com/hoffmaao/thwaites-gnss-ir

Co-editor-in-chief

Atmospheric rivers are short-lived events that can have important impacts on the ice sheets but are not well resolved in climate models. They give rise to ice shelf loss and widespread melt in some areas but ice gain in others. The region of interest of this paper, Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, is one of the most important to understand in detail given potential sea level rise impacts and this study is therefore of interest to stakeholders and the general public as well as scientists concerned with atmosphere ice sheet interactions. The paper also sheds light on synoptic situations that lead to ARs and it is therefore of broad general scientific interest.