Abstract
Abstract. Sublimation of blowing snow is an important parameter not only for the study of polar ice sheets and glaciers, but also for maintaining the ecology of arid and semi-arid lands. However, sublimation of near-surface blowing snow has often been ignored in previous studies. To study sublimation of near-surface blowing snow, we established a sublimation of blowing snow model containing both a vertical moisture diffusion equation and a heat balance equation. The results showed that although sublimation of near-surface blowing snow was strongly reduced by a negative feedback effect, due to vertical moisture diffusion, the relative humidity near the surface does not reach 100 %. Therefore, the sublimation of near-surface blowing snow does not stop. In addition, the sublimation rate near the surface is 3–4 orders of magnitude higher than that at 10 m above the surface and the mass of snow sublimation near the surface accounts for more than half of the total snow sublimation when the friction wind velocity is less than about 0.55 m s−1. Therefore, the sublimation of near-surface blowing snow should not be neglected.
Highlights
Blowing snow is the main source of polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers in snowy areas at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, and these have profound influence on the global hydrologic cycle, climate change and the ecological system
Extensive studies have shown that sublimation of blowing snow is an important method affecting snow distribution, especially in the polar ice sheets, highland mountains and highlatitude areas in the Northern Hemisphere
The mass of sublimated blowing snow has been found to be equal to 18.3 % of annual precipitation in coastal Antarctica (Pomeroy and Jone, 1995), 22 % of winter precipitation in Arctic Alaska (Liston and Sturm, 2004), 17–19 % of annual precipitation in the Rocky Mountains, Canada (MacDonald et al, 2010), and 24 % of annual precipitation in the western Chinese mountains (Zhou et al, 2014)
Summary
Blowing snow is the main source of polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers in snowy areas at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere (such as the north of Canada, Greenland, etc.), and these have profound influence on the global hydrologic cycle, climate change and the ecological system. Extensive studies have shown that sublimation of blowing snow is an important method affecting snow distribution, especially in the polar ice sheets, highland mountains and highlatitude areas in the Northern Hemisphere. The fluxes of sublimated snow during blowing snow returned 10 ± 50 % of seasonal snowfall to the atmosphere in North American prairie and Arctic environments (Pomeroy and Essery, 1999). These results indicate that sublimation of blowing snow is very important for the study of global and polar hydrological systems. The study of sublimation of snow using a numerical model is desirable
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