The surface mass balance and near-surface climate  of the Antarctic ice sheet in RACMO2.4p1

van Dalum, Christiaan T.; van de Berg, Willem Jan; van den Broeke, Michiel R.; van Tiggelen, Maurice

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-4061-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-4061-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-4061-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 9

Research article

|

29 Sep 2025

Research article |

| 29 Sep 2025

The surface mass balance and near-surface climate of the Antarctic ice sheet in RACMO2.4p1

Christiaan T. van Dalum, Willem Jan van de Berg, Michiel R. van den Broeke, and Maurice van Tiggelen

Data sets

Monthly RACMO2.4p1 data for Antarctica (11 km) for SMB, SEB and near-surface variables (1979-2023) C. van Dalum et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14217232

Data set: Monthly averaged RACMO2.3p2 variables (1979-2022) Antarctica Jan Melchior van Wessem et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7845736

A comprehensive dataset of surface mass balance field observations over the Antarctic Ice Sheet Y. Wang https://doi.org/10.11888/Glacio.tpdc.271148

AntAWS Dataset: A compilation of Antarctic automatic weather station observations Yetang Wang et al. https://doi.org/10.48567/key7-ch19

MAU Antarctic automatic weather station data, including surface radiation balance (1995-2022) Van Tiggelen et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.974080

Snow status (wet/dry) in Antarctica from SMMR, SSM/I, AMSR-E and AMSR2 passive microwave radiometers G. Picard https://doi.org/10.18709/perscido.2022.09.ds376

Short summary

In this study, we present a new surface mass balance (SMB) and near-surface climate product for Antarctica with the regional climate model RACMO2.4p1. We assess the impact of major model updates on the climate of Antarctica. Locally, the SMB has changed substantially but also agrees well with observations. In addition, we show that the SMB components, surface energy budget, albedo, pressure, temperature, and wind speed compare well with in situ and remote sensing observations.