A case study of blowing snow cooling effects on anticyclogenesis and cyclolysis

Abstract

[1] This paper focuses on blowing snow and its effect, through thermodynamic forcing, on anticyclogenesis and cyclolysis. A triple-moment blowing snow model (PIEKTUK-T) is coupled to an atmospheric model (MC2), and this system is used to simulate an anticyclogenesis event. For comparison, an uncoupled version of MC2 is used to model the same event. The coupled model (CPL) showed colder low-level temperatures in regions where blowing snow occurred. This cooling contributes to a rise in sea level pressure relative to the uncoupled simulation. A potential vorticity (PV) diagnostic is then applied to quantify how this microphysical cooling affects the geopotential height and balanced wind fields. Surface potential temperature differences between the coupled and uncoupled runs were used as lower boundary conditions for the inversion. The results showed that blowing snow has only a small cooling effect over the anticyclogenesis region in CPL and moderate cooling over Baffin Island, where a decaying cyclone was moving northward. The cooling induces positive geopotential height and anticyclonic flow perturbations extending up to 500 mbar over the cyclone region. The averaged inverted geopotential height anomaly at 1000 mbar level over the cooling region is up to 4.6 dam in 72 h. Surface cooling is demonstrated to play a role in the cyclolysis. The CPL run allows the relative humidity with respect to ice in the blowing snow module to remain supersaturated and includes the heat release from the supersaturated water vapor deposition. Another experiment was carried out, in which supersaturated vapor was not allowed in the blowing snow module. The sensitivity experiment results indicated that blowing snow cooling effects over Baffin Island will be much reduced.