Antarctic Plateau Research Articles

GABLS4 intercomparison of snow models at Dome C in Antarctica

Abstract. The Antarctic plateau, characterized by cold and dry weather conditions with very little precipitation, is mostly covered by snow at the surface. This paper describes an intercomparison of snow models, of varying complexity, used for numerical weather prediction or academic research. The results of offline numerical simulations, carried out during 15 d in 2009, on a single site on the Antarctic plateau, show that the simplest models are able to reproduce the surface temperature as well as the most complex models provided that their surface parameters are well chosen. Furthermore, it is shown that the diversity of the surface parameters of the models strongly impacts the numerical simulations, in particular the temporal variability of the surface temperature and the components of the surface energy balance. The models tend to overestimate the surface temperature by 2–5 K at night and underestimate it by 2 K during the day. The observed and simulated turbulent latent heat fluxes are small, of the order of a few W m−2, with a tendency to underestimate, while the sensible heat fluxes are in general too intense at night as well as during the day. The surface temperature errors are consistent with too large a magnitude of sensible heat fluxes during the day and night. Finally, it is shown that the most complex multilayer models are able to reproduce well the propagation of the daily diurnal wave, and that the snow temperature profiles in the snowpack are very close to the measurements carried out on site.

South African dust contribution to the high southern latitudes and East Antarctica during interglacial stages

Mineral dust is a natural tracer of atmospheric composition and climate variability. Yet, there is still much to be known about the Southern Hemisphere dust cycle. Major efforts have attempted to solve the puzzle of the origin of the potential source areas contributing dust to the Southern Ocean and East Antarctica. Here we present a comprehensive geochemical characterization of a source area, whose role as a dust supplier to high latitude environments has significantly been underestimated. Sediments collected within the major dust-producing areas along the Namibian coast in Southern Africa (Kuiseb, Omaruru and Huab river catchments and the Namib Sand Sea region), were analyzed for radiogenic isotope ratios and rare earth element concentrations. We find that during warm periods, the Southern African dust signature can be found in archives of the Southern Hemisphere, especially in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean and peripheral areas of the East Antarctic plateau.

Effects of Prolonged Exposure to Hypobaric Hypoxia on Oxidative Stress: Overwintering in Antarctic Concordia Station.

Concordia Station is the permanent, research station on the Antarctic Plateau at 3230 m. During the eleventh winter-over campaign (DC11-2015; February 2015 to November 2015) at Antarctic Concordia Station, 13 healthy team members were studied and blood samples were collected at six different time points: baseline measurements (T0), performed at sea level before the departure, and during the campaign at 3, 7, 20, 90, and 300 days after arrival at Concordia Station. Reducing the partial pressure of O2 as barometric pressure falls, hypobaric hypoxia (HH) triggers several physiological adaptations. Among the others, increased oxidative stress and enhanced generation of reactive oxygen/nitrogen species (ROS/RNS), resulting in severe oxidative damage, were observed, which can share potential physiopathological mechanisms associated with many diseases. This study characterized the extent and time-course changes after acute and chronic HH exposure, elucidating possible fundamental mechanisms of adaptation. ROS, oxidative stress biomarkers, nitric oxide, and proinflammatory cytokines significantly increased (range 24-135%) during acute and chronic hypoxia exposure (peak 20th day) with a decrease in antioxidant capacity (peak 90th day: -52%). Results suggest that the adaptive response of oxidative stress balance to HH requires a relatively long time, more than 300th days, as all the observed variables do not return to the preexposition level. These findings may also be relevant to patients in whom oxygen availability is limited through disease (i.e., chronic heart and lung and/or kidney disease) and/or during long-duration space missions.

Water vapor in cold and clean atmosphere: a 3-year data set in the boundary layer of Dome C, East Antarctic Plateau

Abstract. The air at the surface of the high Antarctic Plateau is very cold, dry and clean. Under such conditions, the atmospheric moisture can significantly deviate from thermodynamic equilibrium, and supersaturation with respect to ice can occur. Most conventional humidity sensors for meteorological applications cannot report supersaturation in this environment. A simple approach for measuring supersaturation using conventional instruments, with one being operated in a heated airflow, is presented. Since 2018, this instrumental setup has been deployed at three levels in the lower ∼40 m above the surface at Dome C on the high Antarctic Plateau. A resulting 3-year (2018–2020) record (Genthon et al., 2021a) is presented and analyzed for features such as the frequency of supersaturation with respect to ice, diurnal and seasonal variability, and vertical distribution. As supercooled liquid water droplets are frequently observed in clouds at the temperatures experienced on the high Antarctic Plateau, the distribution of relative humidity with respect to liquid water at Dome C is also discussed. It is suggested that, while not strictly mimicking the conditions of the high troposphere, the surface atmosphere on the Antarctic Plateau is a convenient natural laboratory to test parametrizations of cold microphysics predominantly developed to handle the genesis of high tropospheric clouds. Data are available from the PANGAEA data repository at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.939425 (Genthon et al., 2021a).

Noninvasive Aging Analysis of Lithium-Ion Batteries in Extreme Cold Temperatures

This article presents a noninvasive technical analysis of the degradation of four lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) used in extreme frigid weather. In contrast to other studies in which the batteries were tested in laboratory conditions, the LIBs studied in this article were aged in a real application, more specifically in the WindSled project. In this project, an expedition was made using a zero-emission vehicle drawn by kites, covering more than 2500 km on the East Antarctic Plateau. The study performed in this article aims to quantify the degradation of the LIBs during the expedition. The results show a 5% capacity fade, a 30% increase in the internal resistance and no substantial increase in the impedance of the solid electrolyte interface. Moreover, no evidence of dendrite growth at the anode is inferred by the interpretation of the distribution of relaxation times, incremental capacity analysis, and differential voltage analysis. Based on these results, it can be claimed that the LIBs used in the WindSled Project can successfully operate under <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">–</i> 50 °C. Furthermore, since noninvasive techniques were used to characterize the batteries, they can still be used in upcoming expeditions, with subsequent financial and environmental benefits.

Application of Machine Learning for Simulation of Air Temperature at Dome A

Dome A is the summit of the Antarctic plateau, where the Chinese Kunlun inland station is located. Due to its unique location and high altitude, Dome A provides an important observatory site in analyzing global climate change. However, before the arrival of the Chinese Antarctic expedition in 2005, near-surface air temperatures had not been recorded in the region. In this study, we used meteorological parameters, such as ice surface temperature, radiation, wind speed, and cloud type, to build a reliable model for air temperature estimation. Three models (linear regression, random forest, and deep neural network) were developed based on various input datasets: seasonal factors, skin temperature, shortwave radiation, cloud type, longwave radiation from AVHRR-X products, and wind speed from MERRA-2 reanalysis data. In situ air temperatures from 2010 to 2015 were used for training, while 2005–2009 and 2016–2020 measurements were used for model validation. The results showed that random forest and deep neural network outperformed the linear regression model. In both methods, the 2005–2009 estimates (average bias = 0.86 °C and 1 °C) were more accurate than the 2016–2020 values (average bias = 1.04 °C and 1.26 °C). We conclude that the air temperature at Dome A can be accurately estimated (with an average bias less than 1.3 °C and RMSE around 3 °C) from meteorological parameters using random forest or a deep neural network.

Can Arctic Sea Ice Influence the Extremely Cold Days and Nights in Winter over the Tibetan Plateau?

The Arctic, Antarctic, and Tibetan Plateau (TP) are the northernmost, the southernmost, and the highest places of the Earth, respectively, known as Earth’s “three poles”. The Arctic and TP are the “North Pole” and “Third Pole”, and they exert a significant influence on the regional and global climate. This study analyzed the changing characteristics of Arctic sea ice and explored relationships between extreme cold days on the TP and sea ice concentration in the Arctic. From 1979 to 2019, the sea ice concentration of August–October decreased significantly. The low concentration of sea ice leads to a warmer Arctic and causes cold air over the Arctic to be unstable and more likely to move into the southern. Over the TP, the frequent cold air activities lead to more extreme cold events. This article aims to investigate the response characteristics of atmospheric circulation via the NCAR–CAM5.1 model (National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmosphere Model, Version 5.1). In order to verify the mechanism of Arctic sea ice concentration impacts on the extreme low temperature of the TP, we designed three experimental plans with different sea ice concentrations and sea surface temperatures (SST). In the two sensitivity experiments, the decrease in sea ice concentration and the increase in SST from August to October in the key areas are amplified simultaneously. The simulation results show that the increases in atmosphere thickness of 950–500 hPa in the Arctic from November to the following February reduce the meridional thickness-gradients between the Arctic and the middle latitudes. The westerly flow in middle–high latitudes weakened. As a result, the polar vortex over the Arctic is more likely to move south. There are negative geopotential height anomalies at 500 hPa over the Arctic and TP and positive anomalies over Eurasia. The anticyclonic system at 500 hPa slightly strengthens in the high latitudes of Eurasia (northerly winds in the TP). Strongly negative anomalies of temperature in the northern parts of the TP generate the cold source. To the north of the TP, the strengthened meridional propagation in middle–high latitudes causes more cold extremes.

Noble gases in Dome C micrometeorites - An attempt to disentangle asteroidal and cometary sources

We have performed a comprehensive noble gas study, including the isotopes of krypton and xenon, on a set of micrometeorites (MMs) collected from surface snow at Dome C (DC) on the Antarctic plateau. He and Ne are generally dominated by a solar component, with lower 4He concentrations and 4He/20Ne ratios in crystalline (Xtal) compared to fine-grained carbonaceous (FgC) MMs. Concentrations of (surface-correlated) solar wind (SW) He and Ne in FgC MMs are at the high end of what has been seen in earlier work, whereas the abundances of (volume-correlated) Kr and Xe are similar to what has been found in previous studies of MMs. In most samples, isotopic ratios for Kr and Xe are in the usual range of Q-Kr and -Xe (the Q component is the dominating component in primitive macroscopic meteorites) and air. When quantifiable, cosmic ray exposure (CRE) ages based on cosmogenic 21Ne and 3He, in combination with the Poynting-Robertson effect, are broadly consistent with an origin of the MMs from the asteroid belt. An exception is an Xtal MM, which exhibits a cosmogenic 21Ne concentration in agreement with an origin from beyond Saturn, consistent with a possible cometary origin. In addition, data for trapped noble gases in three (out of ten analyzed) DC MMs provide hints that these may be related to a cometary source. One sample, a fragment of a FgC MM, is of particular interest. This fragment exhibits a Xe composition, although with large analytical uncertainties, deficient in the heavy isotopes 134Xe and 136Xe. This is similar to the Xe isotopic pattern, probably related to cometary ice, measured by Rosetta in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The same MM also has an unusually high 36Ar/38Ar ratio, consistent with Rosetta's Ar measurement (in this case the latter having a large uncertainty). The other hints are for two MMs, of crystalline (Xtal) type, that show Ne similar to that found in laboratory analysis of refractory grains captured from comet 81P/Wild 2 by the Stardust mission. Additionally, a FgC/Xtal MM may contain excess 3He, similar to what has been seen in some cluster interplanetary dust particles (cluster IDPs).

Polar soils exhibit distinct patterns in microbial diversity and dominant phylotypes

The polar regions, comprising the Antarctic, Arctic and Tibetan Plateau, represent the most extreme environments on Earth. Soils across the polar regions harbor diverse microorganisms, which dominate the biogeochemical cycling. However, polar soil microbial diversity is largely underrepresented, and has not been directly compared with the non-polar regions at a global scale, which hinders our understanding of the potential importance of polar microbial diversity. In this study, we investigated the global microbial diversity and taxonomy by comparing 1114 soils, derived from the Antarctic (203), Arctic (432), Tibetan Plateau (104) and non-polar regions (375) across all continents. Soil microbial diversity was found to increase gradually from the Antarctic < Arctic < Tibetan Plateau and < non-polar regions. Soil microbial diversity dominantly corresponded to mean summer temperature in the polar regions and to soil pH in non-polar regions, respectively. Soil microbial community structure significantly differed across the different biogeographical regions, while the Antarctic exhibited the highest habitat-specificity. Over 26,000 phylotypes were observed across global soils, of which 21.8% were unique to the three poles, and 21.2% were apparently ubiquitous globally. Polar soils were dominated by fewer phylotypes, but individual phylotype showed greater dominance than that in non-polar regions. Our study reveals unique patterns of soil microbial diversity and taxonomic compositions in polar regions, and highlights the importance of environmental stresses in controlling soil microbial community.

Assessing observation network design predictions for monitoring Antarctic surface temperature

AbstractNetworks of observations ideally provide adequate sampling of parameters to be monitored for climate and weather forecasting applications. This is a challenge for any network, but is particularly difficult in the harsh environment of the Antarctic continent. We evaluate a network design method providing objective information on station siting for optimal sampling of a variable, here taken to be surface air temperature. The method uses the concept of ensemble sensitivity to predict locations reducing the most total ensemble variance, that is, uncertainty, across the continent. The method is applied to a network of frequently‐reporting stations, and validation is performed using results from assimilating station observations. A cost‐efficient “offline” data assimilation framework is used to allow testing over a large sample of experiments, including a large number of randomly chosen networks that serve as a null hypothesis. Network design predictions agree well with observed error reductions from assimilation. The important role of stations on the East Antarctic Plateau in monitoring surface air temperature is evident in network design and data assimilation results, followed by stations in West Antarctica and the Ross Ice Shelf region. Antarctic coastal and Peninsula stations are found to provide the smallest information content integrated over the continent. Validation results are also robust to covariance localization, an essential factor for ensemble methods. Optimal networks outperform randomly chosen‐networks in all cases, by up to nearly 50%, depending on the size of the network and the covariance localization distance.

Relationship Between Weather Regimes and Atmospheric Rivers in East Antarctica

AbstractHere, we define weather regimes in the East Antarctica—Southern Ocean sector based on daily anomalies of 700 hPa geopotential height derived from ERA5 reanalysis during 1979–2018. Most regimes and their preferred transitions depict synoptic‐scale disturbances propagating eastwards off the Antarctic coastline. While regime sequences are generally short, their interannual variability is strongly driven by the polarity of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Regime occurrences are then intersected with atmospheric rivers (ARs) detected over the same region and period. ARs are equiprobable throughout the year, but clearly concentrate during regimes associated with a strong atmospheric ridges/blockings on the eastern part of the domain, which act to channel meridional advection of heat and moisture from the lower latitudes towards Antarctica. Both regimes and ARs significantly shape climate variability in Antarctica. Regimes favorable to AR occurrences are associated with anomalously warm and humid conditions in coastal Antarctica and, to a lesser extent, the hinterland parts of the Antarctic plateau. These anomalies are strongly enhanced during AR events, with warmer anomalies and dramatically amplified snowfall amounts. Large‐scale conditions favoring AR development are finally explored. They show weak dependency to the SAM, but particularly strong atmospheric ridges/blockings over the Southern Ocean appear as the most favorable pattern, in which ARs can be embedded, and to which they contribute.

10 years of temperature and wind observation on a 45 m tower at Dome C, East Antarctic plateau

Abstract. Long-term, continuous in situ observations of the near-surface atmospheric boundary layer are critical for many weather and climate applications. Although there is a proliferation of surface stations globally, especially in and around populous areas, there are notably fewer tall meteorological towers with multiple instrumented levels. This is particularly true in remote and extreme environments such as the East Antarctic plateau. In the article, we present and analyze 10 years of data from six levels of meteorological instrumentation mounted on a 42 m tower located at Dome C, East Antarctica, near the Concordia research station, producing a unique climatology of the near-surface atmospheric environment (Genthon et al., 2021a, b). Monthly temperature and wind data demonstrate the large seasonal differences in the near-surface boundary layer dynamics, depending on the presence or absence of solar surface forcing. Strong vertical temperature gradients (inversions) frequently develop in calm, winter conditions, while vertical convective mixing occurs in the summer, leading to near-uniform temperatures along the tower. Seasonal variation in wind speed is much less notable at this location than the temperature variation as the winds are less influenced by the solar cycle; there are no katabatic winds as Dome C is quite flat. Harmonic analysis confirms that most of the energy in the power spectrum is at diurnal, annual and semi-annual timescales. Analysis of observational uncertainty and comparison to reanalysis data from the latest generation of ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) reanalyses (ERA5) indicate that wind speed is particularly difficult to measure at this location. Data are distributed on the PANGAEA data repository at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.932512 (Genthon et al., 2021a) and https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.932513 (Genthon et al., 2021b).

Reliability of Antarctic air temperature changes from Polar WRF: A comparison with observations and MAR outputs

This study investigates the near-surface air temperature changes over the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) since 1979 using the Polar Weather Research and Forecasting model (Polar WRF, version 3.9.1) at a horizontal resolution of 27 km. Its performance is estimated by quality-controlled monthly temperature measurements from 46 automatic and manual weather stations, and the outputs of the Regional Atmosphere Model (Modèle Atmosphérique Régional, MAR) forced by ERA-Interim (MAR-ERAI) and ERA-5 (MAR-ERA5). Although warm mean biases at interior stations and cold mean biases at coastal stations are observed for the annual and seasonal mean temperatures, all simulations exhibit robust consistency with the year-to-year variability in the observed temperatures. Compared to MAR, Polar WRF presents a warmer temperature, especially on the West AIS (WAIS). Moreover, while Polar WRF shows a poorer performance than MAR over the AP (Antarctic Peninsula) with respect to the observations, Polar WRF can generally capture the trends on the East AIS (EAIS) and WAIS and shows smaller mean biases in winter and autumn. For 1979–2018, Polar WRF shows a warming trend east of 60°E in the EAIS and parts of the AP and WAIS and an insignificant cooling trend in other regions for the annual temperature. The MAR simulations agree on the warming trend in most regions of the EAIS and WAIS but show different annual warming trends over the AP and East Antarctic Plateau.

Comparison of Ventilated and Unventilated Air Temperature Measurements in Inland Dronning Maud Land on the East Antarctic Plateau

Abstract Surface temperature measurements with naturally ventilated (NV) sensors over the Antarctic Plateau are largely subject to systematic errors caused by solar radiative heating. Here we examined the radiative heating error in Dronning Maud Land on the East Antarctic Plateau using both the newly installed automatic weather stations (AWSs) at NDF and Relay Station and the existing AWSs at Relay Station and Dome Fuji. Two types of NV shields were used in these AWSs: a multiplate radiation shield and a simple cylinder-shaped shield. In austral summer, the temperature bias between the force-ventilated (FV) sensor and the NV sensor never reached zero because of continuous sunlight. The hourly mean temperature errors reached up to 8°C at noon on a sunny day with weak wind conditions. The errors increased linearly with increasing reflected shortwave radiation and decreased nonlinearly with increasing wind speed. These features were observed in both the multiplate and the cylinder-shaped shields. The magnitude of the errors of the multiplate shield was much larger than that of the cylinder-shaped shield. To quantify the radiative errors, we applied an existing correction model based on the regression approach and successfully reduced the errors by more than 70% after the correction. This indicates that we can use the corrected temperature data instead of quality controlled data, which removed warm bias during weak winds in inland Dronning Maud Land.

Atmospheric Structure Observed over the Antarctic Plateau and Its Response to a Prominent Blocking High Event

Atmospheric Structure Observed over the Antarctic Plateau and Its Response to a Prominent Blocking High Event

Biogenic aerosol in central East Antarctic Plateau as a proxy for the ocean-atmosphere interaction in the Southern Ocean

Ten years of data of biogenic aerosol (methane sulfonic acid, MSA, and non-sea salt sulfate, nssSO42−) collected at Concordia Station in the East Antarctic plateau (75° 06′ S, 123° 20′ E) are interpreted as a function of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), Chlorophyll-a concentration (Chl-a; a proxy for phytoplankton biomass), sea ice extent and area. It is possible to draw three different scenarios that link these parameters in early, middle, and late summer. In early summer, the biogenic aerosol is significantly correlated to sea ice retreats through the phytoplankton biomass increases. Chl-a shows a significant correlation with nssSO42− in the finest fraction (< 1 μm). In contrast, only Chl-a in West Pacific and Indian Ocean sectors correlates with MSA in the coarse fraction. The transport routes towards the inner Antarctic plateau and aerosol formation processes could explain the different correlation patterns of the two compounds both resulting from the DMS oxidation. In mid-summer, Chl-a concentrations are at the maximum and are not related to sea ice melting. Due to the complexity of transport processes of air masses towards the Antarctic plateau, the MSA concentrations are low and not related to Chl-a concentration. In late summer, MSA and nssSO42− present the highest concentrations in their submicrometric aerosol fraction, and both are significantly correlated with Chl-a but not with the sea ice. In early and mid-summer, the enhanced efficiency of transport processes from all the surrounding oceanic sectors with air masses traveling at low elevation can explain the highest concentrations of nssSO42− and especially MSA. Finally, considering the entire time series, MSA shows significant year-to-year variability. This variability is significantly correlated with SAM but with a different time lag in early (0-month lag) and late summer (4-months lag). This correlation likely occurs through the effect of the SAM on phytoplankton blooms.

A detailed radiostratigraphic data set for the central East Antarctic Plateau spanning from the Holocene to the mid-Pleistocene

Abstract. We present an ice-penetrating radar data set which consists of 26 internal reflecting horizons (IRHs) that cover the entire Dome C area of the East Antarctic plateau, the most extensive to date in the region. This data set uses radar surveys collected over the space of 10 years, starting with an airborne international collaboration in 2008 to explore the region, up to the detailed ground-based surveys in support of the Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice (BE-OI) European Consortium. Through direct correlation with the EPICA-DC ice core, we date 19 IRHs that span the past four glacial cycles, from 10 ka, beginning of the Holocene, to over 350 ka, ranging from 10 % to 83 % of the ice thickness at the EPICA-DC ice core site. We indirectly date and provide stratigraphic information for seven older IRHs using a 1D ice flow inverse model, going back to an estimated 700 ka. Depth and age uncertainties are quantified for all IRHs and provided as part of the data set. The IRH data set presented in this study is available at the US Antarctic Program Data Center (USAP-DC) (https://doi.org/10.15784/601411, Cavitte et al., 2020) and represents a contribution to the SCAR AntArchitecture action group (AntArchitecture, 2017).

Antarctic ozone hole modifies iodine geochemistry on the Antarctic Plateau

Polar stratospheric ozone has decreased since the 1970s due to anthropogenic emissions of chlorofluorocarbons and halons, resulting in the formation of an ozone hole over Antarctica. The effects of the ozone hole and the associated increase in incoming UV radiation on terrestrial and marine ecosystems are well established; however, the impact on geochemical cycles of ice photoactive elements, such as iodine, remains mostly unexplored. Here, we present the first iodine record from the inner Antarctic Plateau (Dome C) that covers approximately the last 212 years (1800-2012 CE). Our results show that the iodine concentration in ice remained constant during the pre-ozone hole period (1800-1974 CE) but has declined twofold since the onset of the ozone hole era (~1975 CE), closely tracking the total ozone evolution over Antarctica. Based on ice core observations, laboratory measurements and chemistry-climate model simulations, we propose that the iodine decrease since ~1975 is caused by enhanced iodine re-emission from snowpack due to the ozone hole-driven increase in UV radiation reaching the Antarctic Plateau. These findings suggest the potential for ice core iodine records from the inner Antarctic Plateau to be as an archive for past stratospheric ozone trends.

Ice and mixed-phase cloud statistics on the Antarctic Plateau

Abstract. Statistics on the occurrence of clear skies, ice clouds, and mixed-phase clouds over Concordia Station, in the Antarctic Plateau, are provided for multiple timescales and analyzed in relation to simultaneous meteorological parameters measured at the surface. Results are obtained by applying a machine learning cloud identification and classification (CIC) code to 4 years of measurements between 2012–2015 of downwelling high-spectral-resolution radiances, measured by the Radiation Explorer in the Far Infrared – Prototype for Applications and Development (REFIR-PAD) spectroradiometer. The CIC algorithm is optimized for Antarctic sky conditions and results in a total hit rate of almost 0.98, where 1.0 is a perfect score, for the identification of the clear-sky, ice cloud, and mixed-phase cloud classes. Scene truth is provided by lidar measurements that are concurrent with REFIR-PAD. The CIC approach demonstrates the key role of far-infrared spectral measurements for clear–cloud discrimination and for cloud phase classification. Mean annual occurrences are 72.3 %, 24.9 %, and 2.7 % for clear sky, ice clouds, and mixed-phase clouds, respectively, with an inter-annual variability of a few percent. The seasonal occurrence of clear sky shows a minimum in winter (66.8 %) and maxima (75 %–76 %) during intermediate seasons. In winter the mean surface temperature is about 9 ∘C colder in clear conditions than when ice clouds are present. Mixed-phase clouds are observed only in the warm season; in summer they amount to more than one-third of total observed clouds. Their occurrence is correlated with warmer surface temperatures. In the austral summer, the mean surface air temperature is about 5 ∘C warmer when clouds are present than in clear-sky conditions. This difference is larger during the night than in daylight hours, likely due to increased solar warming. Monthly mean results are compared to cloud occurrence and fraction derived from gridded (Level 3) satellite products from both passive and active sensors. The differences observed among the considered products and the CIC results are analyzed in terms of footprint sizes and sensors' sensitivities to cloud optical and geometrical features. The comparison highlights the ability of the CIC–REFIR-PAD synergy to identify multiple cloud conditions and study their variability at different timescales.

Validation and comparison of surface shortwave and longwave radiation products over the three poles

Global warming has currently become a great concern to the international community, among which the three poles (the Arctic, Antarctic, and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau) are the most serious. In this paper, in order to improve the understanding of the matter and energy cycle in the three poles and even the world, eleven shortwave products, (namely, CERES-SYN, ERA5, MERRA-2, NCEP-CFSR, JRA-55, GLDAS, BESS_Rad, MCD18A1, ISCCP-HXG-SSR, GLASS and APP-x), and seven longwave products, (CERES-SYN, ERA5, MERRA-2, NCEP-CFSR, JRA-55, GLDAS, and APP-x) are evaluated and inter-compared in terms of accuracy. During the assessment, the ground measurements collected from four independent ground observation networks (BSRN, CEOP, TPDC, and NMC) are used as reference, and the being compared products are aggregated to the same spatial and temporal scales to make them comparable. To better examine their performance, the eleven radiation products are comprehensively compared in multiple spatial (original scale and 1°×1°) and temporal scales (1-hourly, 3-hourly, daily, and monthly means, and instantaneous). The results show that in the three poles, CERES-SYN and ERA5 show overall better accuracy, at daily, 1°×1° resolutions. The (r)bias and (r)RMSE are less than (3%)5 W/m2 and (23%)40 W/m2 for SWDR, and less than (3%)7 W/m2 and (15%)25 W/m2 for LWDR, respectively, over the polar regions (the Arctic and Antarctic), which are generally better than that of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for most products. The remote sensing products and reanalysis products have their own advantages and disadvantages at different regions. In addition, with the spatio-temporal resolution decreasing, the accuracy of radiation products will gradually increase, except for the products of MCD18A1, ISCCP-HXG-SSR, NCEP-CFSR and GLDAS.