Characteristics of high‐precipitation events in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica

Abstract

[1] High-resolution Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System archive data were used to investigate high-precipitation events at the deep ice core drilling site Kohnen Station, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, during the period [2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006]. The precipitation is found to be highly episodic, with, on average, approximately eight high-precipitation events per year that can bring more than half of the total annual accumulation. The duration of the events varies between 1 day and about 1 week. On most days in the remaining time of the year, however, daily precipitation sums are about one order of magnitude smaller than that for the high-precipitation events. Synoptic weather patterns causing these events were directly connected to frontal systems of cyclones in only 20% of the 51 investigated cases. The majority of the events occurred in connection with (blocking) anticyclones and correspondingly amplified Rossby waves, which lead to advection of warm, moist air from relatively low latitudes. Possible changes in the seasonality and frequency of these events in a different climate can lead to a bias in ice core properties and might also strongly influence the mass balance of the Antarctic continent and thus global sea level change.

Spatial and temporal variability of snow accumulation rate on the East Antarctic ice divide between Dome Fuji and EPICA DML

“…Earlier studies have shown that episodic precipitation events very often occur together with increases in wind speed and temperature (e.g., Birnbaum et al, 2010;Fujita and Abe, 2006;Schlosser et al, 2008Schlosser et al, , 2010. Birnbaum et al (2010) showed in Fig. 6 of their paper a time series of daily precipitation rates from AMPS forecasts for 2002, together with periods identified as strong-wind events on the basis of the 2 hour mean values of wind speed measured at the AWS at EPICA DML.…”

“…Therefore, the role of wind is also one of the keys to better understand the SMB. Earlier studies have shown that episodic precipitation events very often occur together with increases in wind speed and temperature (e.g., Birnbaum et al, 2010;Fujita and Abe, 2006;Schlosser et al, 2008Schlosser et al, , 2010. Birnbaum et al (2010) showed in Fig.…”

“…They also found that a few synoptically induced precipitation events per year can yield a large part of the total annual accumulation. More recently, Schlosser et al (2010) investigated high-precipitation events at EPICA DML, during the period 2001-2006 using Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) archive data. The precipitation was found to be highly episodic, with, on average, approximately eight high-precipitation events per year that are responsible for more than half of the amount of the total annual accumulation.…”

The influence of the synoptic regime on stable water isotopes in precipitation at Dome C, East Antarctica

“…Various studies have confirmed and extended these results for different parts of Antarctica. For example, it has been shown that a few snowfall events per year can be responsible for up to half of the annual total precipitation (Braaten, 2000;Reijmer and Van den Broeke, 2003;Fujita and Abe, 2006;Schlosser et al, 2010a;Gorodetskaya et al, 2013). In addition, Gorodetskaya et al (2014) showed that atmospheric rivers play an important role in heavy precipitation events in Antarctica.…”

“…Bromwich et al, 2005Bromwich et al, , 2013Deb et al, 2016), while model output from AMPS has supported various Antarctic investigations (e.g., Powers, 2007;Nigro et al, 2011Nigro et al, , 2012. The AMPS archive is the repository of gridded output from AMPS from over the years (Powers et al, 2012), and WRF gridded output from the archive has supported numerous studies Cassano, 2008, 2012;Schlosser et al, 2010aSchlosser et al, , 2016. Here, AMPS archive data from the period 2008-2010 are used here in analyses of the meteorological conditions affecting Dome C and its precipitation.…”