Abstract
Abstract. The Arctic is warming faster than the global average and any other region of a similar size. One important factor in this is the poleward atmospheric transport of heat and moisture, which contributes directly to the surface and air warming. In this case study, the atmospheric circulation and spatio-temporal structure of a moisture intrusion event is assessed, which occurred from 5 to 7 June 2017 over the Nordic seas during an intensive measurement campaign over Svalbard. This analysis focuses on high-spatial-resolution simulations with the ICON (ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic) model which is put in context with coarser-resolution runs as well the ERA5 reanalysis. A variety of observations including passive microwave satellite measurements is used for evaluation. The global operational ICON forecasts from the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) at 13 km horizontal resolution are used to drive high-resolution Limited-Area Mode (LAM) ICON simulations over the Arctic with 6 and 3 km horizontal resolutions. The results show the skilful capacity of the ICON-LAM model to represent the observed spatio-temporal structure of the selected moisture intrusion event and its signature in the temperature, humidity and wind profiles, and surface radiation. In several aspects, the high-resolution simulations offer a higher accuracy than the global simulations and the ERA5 reanalysis when evaluated against observations. One feature where the high-resolution simulations demonstrated an advanced skill is the representation of the changing vertical structure of specific humidity and wind associated with the moisture intrusion passing Ny-Ålesund (western Svalbard); the humidity increase at 1–2 km height topped by a dry layer and the development of a low-level wind jet are best represented by the 3 km simulation. The study also demonstrates that such moisture intrusions can have a strong impact on the radiative and turbulent heat fluxes at the surface. A drastic decrease in downward shortwave radiation by ca. 500 W m−2 as well as an increase in downward longwave radiation by ca. 100 W m−2 within 3 h have been determined. These results highlight the importance of both moisture and clouds associated with this event for the surface energy budget.
Highlights
Several processes and feedback mechanisms contribute to the Arctic amplification (Serreze and Barry, 2011; Wendisch et al, 2017)
The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the spatio-temporal structure of an atmospheric rivers (ARs) event in a suite of ICON (ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic; Zängl et al, 2015) simulations
We investigate a moisture intrusion event, which occurred during the Arctic CLoud Observations Using airborne measurements during polar Day (ACLOUD) campaign over the Arctic Ocean and the sea ice north-west of Svalbard (Ehrlich et al, 2019; Wendisch et al, 2019)
Summary
Several processes and feedback mechanisms contribute to the Arctic amplification (Serreze and Barry, 2011; Wendisch et al, 2017). Many models show biases in the representation of the vertical atmospheric thermodynamic structure, clouds, and surface heat fluxes in the Arctic (Sedlar et al, 2020; Inoue et al, 2021) This is due to an incomplete understanding and uncertainty in parameterizations of small-scale physical processes, such as mixed-phase low-level clouds and their interaction with boundary layer processes (Vihma et al, 2014) as well as coarse vertical and horizontal resolutions in current regional Case studies exploring different resolutions like the one presented here are important for better understanding of the processes and for improving parameterizations in both climate and weather prediction models
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