Abstract
Abstract. Observations of the unique chemical environment over snow and ice in recent decades, particularly in the polar regions, have stimulated increasing interest in the boundary layer processes that mediate exchanges between the ice/snow interface and the atmosphere. This paper provides a review of the underlying concepts and examples from recent field studies in polar boundary layer meteorology, which will generally apply to atmospheric flow over snow and ice surfaces. It forms a companion paper to the chemistry review papers in this special issue of ACP that focus on processes linking halogens to the depletion of boundary layer ozone in coastal environments, mercury transport and deposition, snow photochemistry, and related snow physics. In this context, observational approaches, stable boundary layer behavior, the effects of a weak or absent diurnal cycle, and transport and mixing over the heterogeneous surfaces characteristic of coastal ocean environments are of particular relevance.
Highlights
A variety of processes near the surface of the Earth mediate the transfer of heat, momentum, moisture, and chemical species between the surface and the overlying atmosphere
An additional motivation are recent surprises such as 1) the unexpectedly high levels of nitric oxide found over the high interior of Antarctic that appear to have origins in the formation of very shallow mixing layers coupled with photo-denitrification of the snow and 2) the complex chemistry and meteorology of the more deeply mixed ozone-deleting-episodes (ODEs) found first in the Arctic and more recently in the Antarctic
This is of notable concern within the polar studies of the physics and chemistry of boundary layers because the bulk of boundary layer literature is based on mid-latitude data, where diurnal variations in insolation dominate the evolution of the boundary layer
Summary
A variety of processes near the surface of the Earth mediate the transfer of heat, momentum, moisture, and chemical species between the surface and the overlying atmosphere. This paper grew out of a request from the Air-Ice Chemical Interactions (AICI) community for a paper on the physics of the boundary layer to supplement the state-of-the-science papers in this special issue addressing snow photochemistry, halogens and ozone-depleting episodes, and mercury transport and deposition in the polar regions. Sodars have proven useful in Antarctic field programs because they work well in harsh environments and remotely profile thermal turbulence with high resolution vertically and with time, helping conceptualize boundary layer behavior that affects air chemistry near the snow and ice surfaces.
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