Abstract
Continuous measurements of blowing snow are scarce, both in time and space. Satellites now provide the opportunity to derive blowing snow occurrences, transport and sublimation rates over Antarctica. These products are extremely valuable and offer a continental-wide assessment of blowing snow, which is an important but unknown component of the surface mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. However, little ground truth is available to validate these retrievals. The recent application of ceilometers for detection of blowing snow frequencies provides an opportunity to validate the satellite retrievals of blowing snow frequencies at the Princess Elisabeth and Neumayer stations, East Antarctica for the 2011-2016 time period. A routine to detect blowing snow occurrence from remote sensing ceilometers has been developed at those locations. Thanks to their ground-based location, ceilometers are able to detect blowing snow events in the presence of clouds and precipitation, which can be missed by the satellite, since optically thick clouds impede the penetration of the signal. This is important, since the proportion of events missed by the CALIPSO and ICESat-2 satellites due to the presence of cloud decks is currently unknown. Over coastal areas, up to 90% of blowing snow happens under cloudy conditions and represent 30%of all cloudy conditions at both Neumayer and Princess Elisabeth stations. Although both detection methods have their limitations, 10% (4%) of the measurements at Princess Elisabeth (and Neumayer) are identified as blowing snow by the satellite but not by the ceilometer, likely due to differences in sensors, limitation of the surface identification by the satellite, or the spatial inhomogeneity of the blowing snow event. While the satellite blowing snow retrieval is a useful product, further investigation is needed to reduce the uncertainties on blowing snow frequencies associated with clouds.
Highlights
Blowing snow is a frequent phenomenon on the Antarctic ice sheet, occurring as often as 70% during winter (Palm et al, 2011)
We focus on the fraction of clear-sky blowing snow, as well as the fraction of blowing snow occurring under cloud cover as detected by the ceilometer, omitted by the satellite detection
Our results show that at Princess Elisabeth station, assuming that 50% of the clouds are associated with blowing snow is an overestimation, since only 30% of the cloudy conditions are accompanied with blowing snow as detected by the ceilometer
Summary
Blowing snow is a frequent phenomenon on the Antarctic ice sheet, occurring as often as 70% during winter (Palm et al, 2011). By redistributing snow, it is a locally and regionally important component of the surface mass balance. The erosion of snow can have a strong impact on the surface mass balance at a local or regional scale (Gallée et al, 2001; Dery and Yau, 2002; Lenaerts and Van den Broeke, 2012; Groot Zwaaftink et al, 2013) through the displacement and relocation of snow particles, the erosion of snow cover and the exposure of blue ice areas (Takahashi et al, 1988; Bintanja and Van den Broeke, 1995)
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