Surface Energy Budget Terms Research Articles

Database of daily Lagrangian Arctic sea ice parcel drift tracks with coincident ice and atmospheric conditions

Since the early 2000s, sea ice has experienced an increased rate of decline in thickness, extent and age. This new regime, coined the ‘New Arctic’, is accompanied by a reshuffling of energy flows at the surface. Understanding of the magnitude and nature of this reshuffling and the feedbacks therein remains limited. A novel database is presented that combines satellite observations, model output, and reanalysis data with sea ice parcel drift tracks in a Lagrangian framework. This dataset consists of daily time series of sea ice parcel locations, sea ice and snow conditions, and atmospheric states, including remotely sensed surface energy budget terms. Additionally, flags indicate when sea ice parcels travel within cyclones, recording cyclone intensity and distance from the cyclone center. The quality of the ice parcel database was evaluated by comparison with sea ice mass balance buoys and correlations are high, which highlights the reliability of this database in capturing the seasonal changes and evolution of sea ice. This database has multiple applications for the scientific community; it can be used to study the processes that influence individual sea ice parcel time series, or to explore generalized summary statistics and trends across the Arctic.

Surface energy budget at Curiosity through observations and column modeling

Diurnal ground surface temperatures (Tg) and the five major terms of the surface energy budget (SEB) are displayed from hourly Mars Science Laboratory observations and from column model simulations in four contrasting cases along the Curiosity traverse. Tg and the SEB terms are otherwise well simulated on regolith near the landing spot and on rocky Pahrump Hills, but the residual in observation-based SEB (~downwelling longwave radiation) shows unexplained peaks in the morning and evening and simultaneously model-Tg is too cold. Enhanced or diurnally variable crater dust does not help but diurnally variable soil thermal inertia (suggested by Fourier analysis of observed Tg) reduces both defects at both sites. Sand on the steep Namib dune is instead homogeneous, defects here being reduced by taking into account slope effects. Regolith at the 2018 dust storm site appears inhomogeneous, with the SEB terms and Tg relatively well simulated even in this case of extremely heavy dust load.

A Case Study of Observed and Modeled Barrier Flow in the Denmark Strait in May 2015

Abstract Mesoscale barrier jets in the Denmark Strait are common in winter months and have the capability to influence open ocean convection. This paper presents the first detailed observational study of a summertime (21 May 2015) barrier wind event in the Denmark Strait using dropsondes and observations from an airborne Doppler wind lidar (DWL). The DWL profiles agree well with dropsonde observations and show a vertically narrow (~250–400 m) barrier jet of 23–28 m s−1 near the Greenland coast that broadens (~300–1000 m) and strengthens farther off coast. In addition, otherwise identical regional high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model simulations of the event are analyzed at four horizontal grid spacings (5, 10, 25, and 50 km), two vertical resolutions (40 and 60 levels), and two planetary boundary layer (PBL) parameterizations [Mellor–Yamada–Nakanishi–Niino, version 2.5 (MYNN2.5) and University of Washington (UW)] to determine what model configurations best simulate the observed jet structure. Comparison of the WRF simulations with wind observations from satellites, dropsondes, and the airborne DWL scans indicate that the combination of both high horizontal resolution (5 km) and vertical resolution (60 levels) best captures observed barrier jet structure and speeds as well as the observed cloud field, including some convective clouds. Both WRF PBL schemes produced reasonable barrier jets with the UW scheme slightly outperforming the MYNN2.5 scheme. However, further investigation at high horizontal and vertical resolution is needed to determine the impact of the WRF PBL scheme on surface energy budget terms, particularly in the high-latitude maritime environment around Greenland.

Surface energy budget responses to radiative forcing at Summit, Greenland

Abstract. Greenland Ice Sheet surface temperatures are controlled by an exchange of energy at the surface, which includes radiative, turbulent, and ground heat fluxes. Data collected by multiple projects are leveraged to calculate all surface energy budget (SEB) terms at Summit, Greenland, for the full annual cycle from July 2013 to June 2014 and extend to longer periods for the radiative and turbulent SEB terms. Radiative fluxes are measured directly by a suite of broadband radiometers. Turbulent sensible heat flux is estimated via the bulk aerodynamic and eddy correlation methods, and the turbulent latent heat flux is calculated via a two-level approach using measurements at 10 and 2 m. The subsurface heat flux is calculated using a string of thermistors buried in the snow pack. Extensive quality-control data processing produced a data set in which all terms of the SEB are present 75 % of the full annual cycle, despite the harsh conditions. By including a storage term for a near-surface layer, the SEB is balanced in this data set to within the aggregated uncertainties for the individual terms. November and August case studies illustrate that surface radiative forcing is driven by synoptically forced cloud characteristics, especially by low-level, liquid-bearing clouds. The annual cycle and seasonal diurnal cycles of all SEB components indicate that the non-radiative terms are anticorrelated to changes in the total radiative flux and are hence responding to cloud radiative forcing. Generally, the non-radiative SEB terms and the upwelling longwave radiation component compensate for changes in downwelling radiation, although exact partitioning of energy in the response terms varies with season and near-surface characteristics such as stability and moisture availability. Substantial surface warming from low-level clouds typically leads to a change from a very stable to a weakly stable near-surface regime with no solar radiation or from a weakly stable to neutral/unstable regime with solar radiation. Relationships between forcing terms and responding surface fluxes show that the upwelling longwave radiation produces 65–85 % (50–60 %) of the total response in the winter (summer) and the non-radiative terms compensate for the remaining change in the combined downwelling longwave and net shortwave radiation. Because melt conditions are rarely reached at Summit, these relationships are documented for conditions of surface temperature below 0 °C, with and without solar radiation. This is the first time that forcing and response term relationships have been investigated in detail for the Greenland SEB. These results should both advance understanding of process relationships over the Greenland Ice Sheet and be useful for model validation.

Observational constraints on atmospheric and oceanic cross-equatorial heat transports: revisiting the precipitation asymmetry problem in climate models

Abstract Satellite based top-of-atmosphere (TOA) and surface radiation budget observations are combined with mass corrected vertically integrated atmospheric energy divergence and tendency from reanalysis to infer the regional distribution of the TOA, atmospheric and surface energy budget terms over the globe. Hemispheric contrasts in the energy budget terms are used to determine the radiative and combined sensible and latent heat contributions to the cross-equatorial heat transports in the atmosphere (AHTEQ) and ocean (OHTEQ). The contrast in net atmospheric radiation implies an AHTEQ from the northern hemisphere (NH) to the southern hemisphere (SH) (0.75 PW), while the hemispheric difference in sensible and latent heat implies an AHTEQ in the opposite direction (0.51 PW), resulting in a net NH to SH AHTEQ (0.24 PW). At the surface, the hemispheric contrast in the radiative component (0.95 PW) dominates, implying a 0.44 PW SH to NH OHTEQ. Coupled model intercomparison project phase 5 (CMIP5) models with excessive net downward surface radiation and surface-to-atmosphere sensible and latent heat transport in the SH relative to the NH exhibit anomalous northward AHTEQ and overestimate SH tropical precipitation. The hemispheric bias in net surface radiative flux is due to too much longwave surface radiative cooling in the NH tropics in both clear and all-sky conditions and excessive shortwave surface radiation in the SH subtropics and extratropics due to an underestimation in reflection by clouds.

Near-surface meteorology during the Arctic Summer Cloud Ocean Study (ASCOS): evaluation of reanalyses and global climate models

Abstract. Atmospheric measurements from the Arctic Summer Cloud Ocean Study (ASCOS) are used to evaluate the performance of three atmospheric reanalyses (European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF)-Interim reanalysis, National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) reanalysis, and NCEP-DOE (Department of Energy) reanalysis) and two global climate models (CAM5 (Community Atmosphere Model 5) and NASA GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) ModelE2) in simulation of the high Arctic environment. Quantities analyzed include near surface meteorological variables such as temperature, pressure, humidity and winds, surface-based estimates of cloud and precipitation properties, the surface energy budget, and lower atmospheric temperature structure. In general, the models perform well in simulating large-scale dynamical quantities such as pressure and winds. Near-surface temperature and lower atmospheric stability, along with surface energy budget terms, are not as well represented due largely to errors in simulation of cloud occurrence, phase and altitude. Additionally, a development version of CAM5, which features improved handling of cloud macro physics, has demonstrated to improve simulation of cloud properties and liquid water amount. The ASCOS period additionally provides an excellent example of the benefits gained by evaluating individual budget terms, rather than simply evaluating the net end product, with large compensating errors between individual surface energy budget terms that result in the best net energy budget.

A sensitivity study to global desertification in cold and warm climates: results from the IPSL OAGCM model

Many simulations have been devoted to study the impact of global desertification on climate, but very few have quantified this impact in very different climate contexts. Here, the climatic impacts of large-scale global desertification in warm (2100 under the SRES A2 scenario forcing), modern and cold (Last Glacial Maximum, 21 thousand years ago) climates are assessed by using the IPSL OAGCM. For each climate, two simulations have been performed, one in which the continents are covered by modern vegetation, the other in which global vegetation is changed to desert i.e. bare soil. The comparison between desert and present vegetation worlds reveals that the prevailing signal in terms of surface energy budget is dominated by the reduction of upward latent heat transfer. Replacing the vegetation by bare soil has similar impacts on surface air temperature South of 20°N in all three climatic contexts, with a warming over tropical forests and a slight cooling over semi-arid and arid areas, and these temperature changes are of the same order of magnitude. North of 20°N, the difference between the temperatures simulated with present day vegetation and in a desert world is mainly due to the change in net radiation related to the modulation of the snow albedo by vegetation, which is obviously absent in the desert world simulations. The enhanced albedo in the desert world simulations induces a large temperature decrease, especially during summer in the cold and modern climatic contexts, whereas the largest difference occurs during winter in the warm climate. This temperature difference requires a larger heat transport to the northern high latitudes. Part of this heat transport increase is achieved through an intensification of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. This intensification reduces the sea-ice extent and causes a warming over the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans in the warm climate context. In contrast, the large cooling North of 20°N in both the modern and cold climate contexts induces an increase in sea-ice extent.

An Observational Analysis and Evaluation of Land Surface Model Accuracy in the Nebraska Sand Hills

Abstract In this study, the influence of subsurface water on the energy budget components of three locations with heterogeneous land surfaces in the Nebraska Sand Hills are examined through observations and use of the Noah land surface model (LSM). Observations of the four primary components of the surface energy budget are compared for a wet interdunal meadow valley, a dry interdunal valley, and a dunal upland location. With similar atmospheric forcing at each site, it was determined that differences in the partitioning of the mean diurnal net radiation (Rnet) existed among the three locations due to the influence of varied soil moisture and vegetation through the year. At the wet valley, observations indicated that almost 65% of the mean daily peak Rnet was used for latent heating, due to the relatively higher soil moisture content resulting from an annual upward gradient of subsurface water and denser vegetation. In sharp contrast, the dunal upland site yielded only 21% of the mean daily peak Rnet going to latent heating, and a greater mean diurnal soil heat flux with typically drier soils and sparser vegetation than at the wet valley. The dry valley partition of the peak Rnet fell between the wet valley and dunal upland site, with approximately 50% going to sensible heating and 50% toward latent heating. In addition to the observational analysis, an uncoupled land surface model was forced with the observations from each site to simulate the energy budgets, with no tuning of the model’s fundamental equations and with little adjustment of the model parameters to improve results. While the model was able to reasonably simulate the mean diurnal and annual energy budget components at all locations, in most instances with root-mean-square errors within 20%–25% of the observed values, the lack of explicit treatment of subsurface water within the model limited predictability, particularly at the wet valley site. For instance, only 25% of the peak mean diurnal Rnet went toward latent heating in the model simulation of the wet valley, compared to 65% as estimated by observations. Model evaluation statistics are presented to document the land surface model’s ability to capture the annual and mean diurnal variations in the surface energy budget terms at the dry valley and dunal upland sites, but the absence of subsurface water results in large errors in the wet valley simulation. From these results, a case is made for the future inclusion of the explicit treatment of subsurface water within the Noah LSM to better approximate the prediction of the surface energy budget in such environments.

Measurements near the Atmospheric Surface Flux Group tower at SHEBA: Near‐surface conditions and surface energy budget

Measurements at the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean Experiment (SHEBA) Atmospheric Surface Flux Group (ASFG) tower site from October 1997 to October 1998 are used to describe the annual cycle of the near‐surface environment and the surface energy budget (SEB). Comparisons with historical data and climatological estimates suggest that the SHEBA site was 3–8°C warmer in March and April. The unique SHEBA profile measurements showed that the mean near‐surface environment is strongly stable during 6 winter months, and near neutral or weakly stable during the other months. However, one‐hour data show that neutral stratification does occur 25% of the time during the winter. The monthly mean flux profiles suggest that turbulent processes cool the near‐surface atmosphere during the winter and warm it during the summer, though the sign of the sensible heat flux is negative during both the winter and July. The SHEBA SEB calculation is unique in its nearly exclusive use of observed rather than derived values. The magnitude of the best estimate of the annual net observed surface energy surplus at SHEBA (8.2 W m−2) was consistent with the observed surface ice and snowmelt and was in reasonable agreement with most previous estimates of the net annual SEB over the Arctic pack ice. However, the partitioning of the various components of the SEB differed in the SHEBA data. The SHEBA site had unusually large incoming longwave radiation in the fall and spring, giving an annual mean that was larger by 10.4–19.3 W m−2. The site also had substantially less incoming solar radiation during most months than in previous estimates, producing a difference in the annual mean of 5.0–9.5 W m−2 when compared to these estimates. The observed magnitudes of the sensible (−2.2 W m−2) and latent (1.1 W m−2) heat fluxes at SHEBA were smaller than previous climatological estimates, as were the conductive flux estimates (2.4–5.0 W m−2) at this site. Estimates of the measurement errors suggest that they are not likely to alter the conclusions concerning the SEB terms presented here but will prevent us from conclusively determining the reasons for the net thinning of the ice observed during SHEBA.

Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation of a Three-Dimensional Mesoscale Numerical Model Simulation of a Sea Breeze in Complex Terrain

This study presents an evaluation of the performance of the Colorado State University (CSU) three-dimensional numerical mesoscale model. The evaluation consists of quantitative and qualitative comparisons of the model output with observed data. The observations were undertaken in the lower Fraser Valley of British Columbia, Canada on 23 August 1985 utilizing up to 23 fixed stations for anemometry, three acoustic sounders, one tethersonde and one set of instruments for determining the surface energy budget terms. The modeling covers a 24-hour period during which a wed-developed sea breeze was observed. While the results of the model evaluation apply to the single case presented, they have implications for a wide range of cases. The statistical methods of Willmott are applied to hourly averaged variables to assess the model's performance. The evaluation shows that the model is capable of providing very realistic wind and temperature fields within the broad coastal valley which makes up the bulk of the domain. The modeled mixed layer depth, surface energy budget terms and wind profiles are in good agreement with observed data.