Abstract
This study investigates the sensitivity of modeled surface melt and subsurface heating on the Antarctic ice sheet to a new spectral snow albedo and radiative transfer scheme in the Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO), version 2.3p3 (Rp3). We tune Rp3 to observations by performing several sensitivity experiments and assess the impact on temperature and melt by incrementally changing one parameter at a time. When fully tuned, Rp3 compares well with in situ and remote sensing observations of surface mass and energy balance, melt, near-surface and (sub)surface temperature, albedo and snow grain specific surface area. Near-surface snow temperature is especially sensitive to the prescribed fresh snow specific surface area and fresh dry snow metamorphism. These processes, together with the refreezing water grain size and subsurface heating, are important for melt around the margins of the Antarctic ice sheet. Moreover, small changes in the albedo and the aforementioned processes can lead to an order of magnitude overestimation of melt, locally leading to runoff and a reduced surface mass balance.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1071-1089 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | The Cryosphere |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 29 Mar 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Financial support. This research has been supported by Horizon
Funding Information:
Acknowledgements. This publication was supported by PROTECT. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 869304, PROTECT contribution number 30. We also acknowledge the ECMWF for archiving facilities and computational time on their supercomputers.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Christiaan T. van Dalum et al.
