One year of Aerosol and Cloud measurements in Rothera on the Antarctic Peninsula

Abstract

Our limited understanding of clouds is a major source of uncertainty in climate sensitivity and climate model projections. The Southern Ocean is the largest region on Earth where climate models present large biases in short and long wave radiation fluxes which in turn affect the representation of sea surface temperatures, sea ice and ultimately large scale circulation in the Southern Hemisphere. Evidence suggests that the poor representation of mixed phase clouds at the micro- and macro scales is responsible for the model biases in this region. The Southern Ocean Clouds (SOC) project is a multi-scale, multi-platform approach with the aim of improving understanding of aerosol and cloud microphysics in this region, and their representation in numerical models. In February 2022 we installed a suite of instruments at the Rothera research station on the Antarctic peninsula to measure the physical and chemical properties of aerosol, the number concentrations of Cloud Condensation Nuclei and Ice Nucleating Particles, and cloud height and thickness all year round. Here we will report the first observations and statistics of one full year of aerosol and cloud measurements from the Rothera research station.