Brief communication: Evaluating Antarctic precipitation in ERA5 and CMIP6 against CloudSat observations

Roussel, Marie‐Laure; Lemonnier, Florentin; Genthon, Christophe; Krinner, Gerhard

doi:10.5194/tc-14-2715-2020

Cited by 38 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The main take-home message from this thesis is that short-lived and infre- [2020]; Roussel et al [2020]). A major science question going forward is to examine whether GCMs can accurately simulate the statistical distribution of extreme events and then resolve the surface mass balance impacts from those events.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Antarctic Atmospheric River Climatology and Impacts

Wille

2020

Preprint

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Atmospheric rivers, broadly defined as narrow yet long bands of strong horizontal vapor transport typically imbedded in a low level jet ahead of a cold front of an extratropical cyclone, provide a sub-tropical connection to the Antarctic continent and are observed to significantly impact the affected region&#8217;s surface mass balance over short, extreme events. When an atmospheric river makes landfall on the Antarctic continent, their signature is clearly observed in increased downward longwave radiation, cloud liquid water content, surface temperature, snowfall, surface melt, and moisture transport.Using an atmospheric river detection algorithm designed for Antarctica and regional climate simulations from MAR, we created a climatology of atmospheric river occurrence and their associated impacts on surface melt and snowfall. Despite their rarity of occurrence over Antarctica (maximum frequency of ~1.5% over a given point), they have produced significant impacts on melting and snowfall processes. From 1979-2017, atmospheric rivers landfalls and their associated radiative flux anomalies and foehn winds accounted for around 40% of the total summer surface melt on the Ross Ice Shelf (approaching 100% at higher elevations in Marie Byrd Land) and 40-80% of total winter surface melt on the ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula. On the other side of the continent in East Antarctica, atmospheric rivers have a greater influence on annual snowfall variability. There atmospheric rivers are responsible for 20-40% of annual snowfall with localized higher percentages across Dronning Maud Land, Amery Ice Shelf, and Wilkes Land.Atmospheric river landfalls occur within a highly amplified polar jet pattern and often are found in the entrance region of a blocking ridge. Therefore, atmospheric river variability is connected with atmospheric blocking variability over the Southern Ocean. There has been a significant increase in atmospheric river activity over the Amundsen-Bellingshausen sea and coastline and into Dronning Maud Land region from 1980-2018. Meanwhile, there is a significant decreasing trend in the region surrounding Law Dome. Our results suggest that atmospheric rivers play a significant role in the Antarctic surface mass balance, and that any future changes in atmospheric blocking or tropical-polar teleconnections may have significant impacts on future surface mass balance projections.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Antarctic Atmospheric River Climatology and Impacts

Wille

2020

Preprint

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“…This change in precipitation ranges from 5.5 to 24.4 % during the 21 st century, depending on greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. However, the Palerme et al [11] and Roussel et al [12] studies presenting an intercomparison of CMIP5 and CMIP6 models with CloudSat observations and ERA-Interim reanalysis shows that the models overestimate precipitation in comparison with CloudSat climatology [4], sometimes by more than 100 %. And even though the simulated surface precipitation is compared to an observation level at an altitude of 1200 meters above the local surface, the discrepancy between data and models is large, and questionable for the future prediction of precipitation.…”

Section: оценка осадков в прибрежных районах антарктики в глобальной модели атмосферы Lmdz6 с использованием наземных радиолокационных наmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…And even though the simulated surface precipitation is compared to an observation level at an altitude of 1200 meters above the local surface, the discrepancy between data and models is large, and questionable for the future prediction of precipitation. In addition, the agreement between data and models is even worse for the simulation of precipitation on the plateau than over the peripheral regions [11][12].…”

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of coastal Antarctic precipitation in LMDz6 global atmospheric model using ground-based radar observations

Lemonnier

Chemison

Krinner

et al. 2021

Problemy Arktiki i Antarktiki

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In the current context of climate change in the poles, one of the objectives of the APRES3 (Antarctic Precipitation Remote Sensing from Surface and Space) project was to characterize the vertical structure of precipitation in order to better simulate it. Precipitation simulated by models in Antarctica is currently very widespread and it overestimates the data. Sensitivity studies have been conducted using a global climate model and compared to the observations obtained at the Dumont d’Urville coast station, obtained by a Micro Rain Radar (MRR). The LMDz/IPSL general circulation model, with zoomed configuration over Dumont d’Urville, has been considered for this study. A sensitivity study was conducted on the physical and numerical parameters of the LMDz model with the aim of estimating their contribution to the precipitation simulation. Sensitivity experiments revealed that changes in the sedimentation and sublimation parameters do not significantly impact precipitation rate. However, dissipation of the LMDz model, which is a numerical process that dissipates spatially excessive energy and keeps the model stable, impacts precipitation indirectly but very strongly. A suitable adjustment of the dissipation reduces significantly precipitation over Antarctic peripheral area, thus providing a simulated profile in better agreement with the MRR observations.

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“…The models thus differ widely in capturing the mean value, trend, and seasonality of these variables over Antarctica with biases varying in space and amongst models, thereby posing enormous challenges for the scientific community in making reliable climate change projections (Agosta et al 2015). Recent studies based on the latest generation of models available in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) reported similar issues in representing precipitation over the region despite the advancement in model physics (Roussel et al 2020). These biases in GCMs are most likely caused by their low resolutions and a lack of polar-specific physics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future projections of temperature and precipitation for Antarctica

Tewari

Mishra

Salunke

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Antarctica directly impacts the lives of more than half of the world’s population living in the coastal regions. Therefore it is highly desirable to project its climate for the future. But it is a region where the climate models have large inter-modal variability and hence it raises questions about the robustness of the projections available. Therefore, we have examined 87 global models from three modeling consortia (CMIP5, CMIP6, and NEX-GDDP), characterized their fidelity, selected a set of 10 models (MM10) performing satisfactorily, and used them to make the future projection of precipitation and temperature, and assessed the contribution of precipitation towards sea-levels. For the historical period, the multi-model mean (MMM) of CMIP5 performed slightly better than CMIP6 and was worse for NEX-GDDP, with negligible surface temperature bias of approximately 0.5°C and a 17.5% and 19% biases in the mean precipitation noted in both CMIP consortia. These biases considerably reduced in MM10, with 21st century projections showing surface warming of approximately 5.1 - 5.3°C and precipitation increase approximately 44 - 50% against ERA-5 under high-emission scenarios in both CMIP consortia. This projected precipitation increase is much less than that projected using MMM in previous studies with almost the same level of warming, implying approximately 40.0 mm/year contribution of precipitation towards sea-level mitigation against approximately 65.0 mm/year.

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Brief communication: Evaluating Antarctic precipitation in ERA5 and CMIP6 against CloudSat observations

Cited by 38 publications

References 18 publications

Antarctic Atmospheric River Climatology and Impacts

Antarctic Atmospheric River Climatology and Impacts

Evaluation of coastal Antarctic precipitation in LMDz6 global atmospheric model using ground-based radar observations

Future projections of temperature and precipitation for Antarctica

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