Atmospheric Moisture Transport to the Arctic: Assessment of Reanalyses and Analysis of Transport Components

Dufour, Ambroise; Zolina, Olga; Gulev, Sergey

doi:10.1175/jcli-d-15-0559.1

Cited by 120 publications

(190 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(4 reference statements)

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“…Because we focus on the relationship between the total AMT and winter Arctic warming, an elaboration of the dynamical pathways through which moisture is transported to the Arctic is not provided. Previous studies have verified that the transient eddies present a major contribution to the total AMT into the Arctic (e.g., Dufour et al ., ). And the Greenland Sea (Fan et al ., ), west coast of Greenland (Liu and Barnes, ), and Norwegian Sea (Kim et al ., ) have been verified to be the gateways.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contribution of atmospheric moisture transport to winter Arctic warming

Hao

Luo

Wang

et al. 2019

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Atmospheric moisture transport (AMT) is known to have an influence on the winter Arctic surface air temperature (SAT). However, a systematic investigation involving a verification of the physical linkages and spatial sensitivity within the Arctic, as well as a quantification of such contribution is still lacking. Our work first verifies the variation coherence between AMT and the SAT over the winters of 1979–2015, based on multiple data sets. Climate model projections reveal tendencies towards more frequent high values in both SAT and AMT from 2010 to 2065 relative to that from 1950 to 2005, as well as a high correlation coefficient between their detrended series. Then, a composite analysis is applied based on different AMT values. During high‐AMT episodes, enhanced AMT intrudes into the Arctic, with the Norwegian Sea as the gateway, and further induces unevenly distributed warming inside the Arctic. The greatest warming occurs in the Barents‐Kara Sea, which is tightly associated with the altered atmospheric moisture content and its subsequent changes of surface radiation balance. In addition, the intruding moisture can induce latent heat release and sea ice melting, which also influences the warming. Furthermore, by conducting numerical model experiments in the winter of 2012/2013, a total warming effect of 9.66 °C averaged across the Arctic for the original AMT is revealed. By setting different incremental AMT values in five cases, the leading role of AMT is found to switch in the 0.5MT case (the case wherein the AMT value is 0.5 times the original) from altering the atmospheric moisture content to producing precipitation. This finding suggests that evenly spaced AMTs result in the alleviation of SAT increases.

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Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contribution of atmospheric moisture transport to winter Arctic warming

Hao

Luo

Wang

et al. 2019

Intl Journal of Climatology

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“…Snow depth is used as inferred by reanalyses and, if needed, converted to centimetres. More information about general characteristics of reanalysis products in the Arctic can be found in Lindsay et al (2014), Dufour et al (2016) and Wegmann et al (2017).…”

Section: Reanalysis Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Spring snow albedo feedback over northern Eurasia: Comparing in situ measurements with reanalysis products

et al. 2018

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Abstract. This study uses daily observations and modern reanalyses in order to evaluate reanalysis products over northern Eurasia regarding the spring snow albedo feedback (SAF) during the period from 2000 to 2013. We used the state-of-the-art reanalyses from ERA-Interim/Land and the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) as well as an experimental set-up of ERA-Interim/Land with prescribed short grass as land cover to enhance the comparability with the station data while underlining the caveats of comparing in situ observations with gridded data. Snow depth statistics derived from daily station data are well reproduced in all three reanalyses. However day-to-day albedo variability is notably higher at the stations than for any reanalysis product. The ERAInterim grass set-up shows improved performance when representing albedo variability and generates comparable estimates for the snow albedo in spring. We find that modern reanalyses show a physically consistent representation of SAF, with realistic spatial patterns and area-averaged sensitivity estimates. However, station-based SAF values are significantly higher than in the reanalyses, which is mostly driven by the stronger contrast between snow and snow-free albedo. Switching to grass-only vegetation in ERA-Interim/Land increases the SAF values up to the level of station-based estimates. We found no significant trend in the examined 14-year time series of SAF, but interannual changes of about 0.5 % K −1 in both station-based and reanalysis estimates were derived. This interannual variability is primarily dominated by the variability in the snowmelt sensitivity, which is correctly captured in reanalysis products. Although modern reanalyses perform well for snow variables, efforts should be made to improve the representation of dynamic albedo changes.

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“…Intercomparison will help to identify the components and variability patterns that are most consistent across different products. In the extratropics reanalyses demonstrate a strong spread of E 2 P, but they are quite consistent in terms of the moisture transport and its interannual variability (Dufour et al 2016). It will be interesting to determine whether this case holds for the Middle East tropics.…”

Section: Discussion and Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 70%

Regional Hydrological Cycle over the Red Sea in ERA-Interim

Zolina

Dufour

Gulev

et al. 2016

Journal of Hydrometeorology

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The major sources of atmospheric moisture over the Red Sea are analyzed using ERA-Interim for the 1979-2013 period. The vertical structure of moisture transports across the coastlines has been computed separately for the western and eastern coasts of the Red Sea. The vertical structure of the moisture transport from the Red Sea to the continents is dominated by a breeze-like circulation in the near-surface layer and the Arabian high above 850 hPa. The lower-layer, breeze-like circulation is acting to export the moisture to the northwest of Africa and to the Arabian Peninsula and contributes about 80% of the moisture exports from the Red Sea, dominating over the transport in the upper layer, where the moisture is advected to the Arabian Peninsula in the northern part of the sea and to the African continent in the southern part. Integrated moisture divergence over the Red Sea decreased from the early 1980s to 1997 and then increased until the 2010s. Associated changes in the moisture export were provided primarily by the increasing intensity of the breeze-associated transports. The transports above the boundary layer, while being strong across the western and the eastern coasts, have a smaller effect on the net moisture export. The interannual variability of the moisture export in the near-surface layer was found to be closely correlated with the variability in sea surface temperature, especially in summer. Implications of the observed changes in the moisture advection for the hydrological cycle of the Middle East are discussed.

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Atmospheric Moisture Transport to the Arctic: Assessment of Reanalyses and Analysis of Transport Components

Cited by 120 publications

References 54 publications

Contribution of atmospheric moisture transport to winter Arctic warming

Contribution of atmospheric moisture transport to winter Arctic warming

Spring snow albedo feedback over northern Eurasia: Comparing in situ measurements with reanalysis products

Regional Hydrological Cycle over the Red Sea in ERA-Interim

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