Extreme events of snow grain size increase in East Antarctica and their relationship with meteorological conditions

Stefanini, Claudio; Macelloni, Giovanni; Leduc-Leballeur, Marion; Favier, Vincent; Pohl, Benjamin; Picard, Ghislain

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-593-2024

Articles | Volume 18, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-593-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-593-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 2

Research article

|

12 Feb 2024

Research article |

| 12 Feb 2024

Extreme events of snow grain size increase in East Antarctica and their relationship with meteorological conditions

Claudio Stefanini, Giovanni Macelloni, Marion Leduc-Leballeur, Vincent Favier, Benjamin Pohl, and Ghislain Picard

Data sets

NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU)-B, Version 1.0 Ralph R. Ferraro et al. https://doi.org/10.7289/V500004W

Antarctic Oscillation National Weather Service (NWS) Climate Prediction Center (CPC) https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/aao.shtml

ERA5 hourly data on pressure levels from 1979 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.bd0915c6

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1979 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

Short summary

Local and large-scale meteorological conditions have been considered in order to explain some peculiar changes of snow grains on the East Antarctic Plateau from 2000 to 2022, by using remote sensing observations and reanalysis. We identified some extreme grain size events on the highest ice divide, resulting from a combination of conditions of low wind speed and low temperature. Moreover, the beginning of seasonal grain growth has been linked to the occurrence of atmospheric rivers.