Daily evolution in dust and black carbon content, snow grain size, and snow albedo during snowmelt, Rocky Mountains, Colorado

Skiles, M.; Painter, T. H.

doi:10.1017/jog.2016.125

Cited by 104 publications

(105 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…In Region I (southern TP), the snow was cleaner and had lower concentrations of LAPs comparable to concentrations in the old snow of glaciers (Kaspari et al, 2014). The previous studies also examined concentrations of LAPs in snow from central North America (Doherty et al, 2014(Doherty et al, , 2016Skiles and Painter, 2016;Zatko et al, 2016), northern China (Huang et al, 2011;Wang et al, 2013;Ye et al, 2012), Japan (Kuchiki et al, 2015), Europe (Chýlek et al, 1987), the Arctic (Doherty et al, 2010;Forsström et al, 2013), Greenland (Aoki et al, 2014;Zatko et al, 2013), and the Antarctic (Warren and Clark, 1990;Zatko et al, 2013). Concentrations of BC and other water-insoluble LAPs from the TP were mostly similar to those in the snow from northern China (Wang et al, 2013), but higher than those from the Himalayas (Table 2).…”

Section: Distributions Of Lapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black carbon and mineral dust in snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau

et al. 2018

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Abstract. Snow cover plays a key role for sustaining ecology and society in mountainous regions. Light-absorbing particulates (including black carbon, organic carbon, and mineral dust) deposited on snow can reduce surface albedo and contribute to the near-worldwide melting of snow and ice. This study focused on understanding the role of black carbon and other water-insoluble light-absorbing particulates in the snow cover of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). The results found that the black carbon, organic carbon, and dust concentrations in snow cover generally ranged from 202 to 17 468 ng g −1 , 491 to 13 880 ng g −1 , and 22 to 846 µg g −1 , respectively, with higher concentrations in the central to northern areas of the TP. Back trajectory analysis suggested that the northern TP was influenced mainly by air masses from Central Asia with some Eurasian influence, and air masses in the central and Himalayan region originated mainly from Central and South Asia. The relative biomassburning-sourced black carbon contributions decreased from ∼ 50 % in the southern TP to ∼ 30 % in the northern TP. The relative contribution of black carbon and dust to snow albedo reduction reached approximately 37 and 15 %, respectively. The effect of black carbon and dust reduced the snow cover duration by 3.1 ± 0.1 to 4.4 ± 0.2 days. Meanwhile, the black carbon and dust had important implications for snowmelt water loss over the TP. The findings indicate that the impacts of black carbon and mineral dust need to be properly accounted for in future regional climate projections, particularly in the high-altitude cryosphere.

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Section: Distributions Of Lapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black carbon and mineral dust in snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau

et al. 2018

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“…This calibration is applied to the dataset of Doherty et al (2014) in our study, and thus the observations of Doherty et al (2014Doherty et al ( , 2016 used here are comparable. In addition, Skiles and Painter (2016b) made daily measurements of BC-in-snow with an SP2 in the Senator Beck Basin Study Area (SBBSA) in the San Juan Mountains during a period of 2 months (late March to middle May) in 2013. The locations and sample dates as well as the measurements for these stations are given in Table 1.…”

Section: Observationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of absorbing aerosol deposition on snowpack and hydrologic cycle in the Rocky Mountain region based on variable-resolution CESM (VR-CESM) simulations

Liu

Lin

et al. 2018

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. The deposition of light-absorbing aerosols (LAAs), such as black carbon (BC) and dust, onto snow cover has been suggested to reduce the snow albedo and modulate the snowpack and consequent hydrologic cycle. In this study we use the variable-resolution Community Earth System Model (VR-CESM) with a regionally refined highresolution (0.125 • ) grid to quantify the impacts of LAAs in snow in the Rocky Mountain region during the period 1981-2005. We first evaluate the model simulation of LAA concentrations both near the surface and in snow and then investigate the snowpack and runoff changes induced by LAAs in snow. The model simulates similar magnitudes of near-surface atmospheric dust concentrations as observations in the Rocky Mountain region. Although the model underestimates near-surface atmospheric BC concentrations, the model overestimates BC-in-snow concentrations by 35 % on average. The regional mean surface radiative effect (SRE) due to LAAs in snow reaches up to 0.6-1.7 W m −2 in spring, and dust contributes to about 21-42 % of total SRE. Due to positive snow albedo feedbacks induced by the LAA SRE, snow water equivalent is reduced by 2-50 mm and snow cover fraction by 5-20 % in the two regions around the mountains (eastern Snake River Plain and southwestern Wyoming), corresponding to an increase in surface air temperature by 0.9-1.1 • C. During the snow melting period, LAAs accelerate the hydrologic cycle with monthly runoff increases of 0.15-1.00 mm day −1 in April-May and reductions of 0.04-0.18 mm day −1 in June-July in the mountainous regions. Of all the mountainous regions, the Southern Rockies experience the largest reduction of total runoff by 15 % during the later stage of snowmelt (i.e., June and July). Compared to previous studies based on field observations, our estimation of dust-induced SRE is generally 1 order of magnitude smaller in the Southern Rockies, which is ascribed to the omission of larger dust particles (with the diameter > 10 µm) in the model. This calls for the inclusion of larger dust particles in the model to reduce the discrepancies. Overall these results highlight the potentially important role of LAA interactions with snowpack and the subsequent impacts on the hydrologic cycles across the Rocky Mountains.

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“…To address this void, a high-resolution record of snow properties and gravimetric dust and BC concentrations were collected on a near daily basis at SASP over the last 2 months of snow cover in 2013. A detailed description of this dataset is presented in Skiles and Painter (2016).…”

Section: Study Area and Field Samplingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A method to retrieve the spectral complex refractive index and single scattering optical properties of dust deposited in mountain snow

2016

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ABSTRACT. Dust deposition to snow can have regionally important climatic and hydrologic impacts resulting from direct reduction of surface albedo and indirectly from the initiation of snow albedo feedbacks. Modeling the radiative impacts of dust deposited in snow requires knowledge of the optical properties of both components. Here we present an inversion technique to retrieve the effective optical properties of dust deposited in mountain snow cover from measurements of hemispherical dust reflectance and particle size distributions using radiative transfer modeling. First, modeled reflectance is produced from single scattering properties modeled with Mie theory for a specified grain size distribution over a range of values for the imaginary part of the complex refractive index (k = 0.00001-0.1). Then, a multi-step look-up table process is employed to retrieve k λ and single scattering optical properties by matching measured to modeled reflectance across the shortwave and near infrared. The real part of the complex refractive index, n, for dust aerosols ranges between 1.5 and 1.6 and a sensitivity analysis shows the method is relatively insensitive to the choice of n within this range, 1.525 was used here. Using the values retrieved by this method to update dust optical properties in a snow + aerosol radiative transfer model reduces errors in springtime albedo modeling by 50-70%.

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Daily evolution in dust and black carbon content, snow grain size, and snow albedo during snowmelt, Rocky Mountains, Colorado

Cited by 104 publications

References 32 publications

Black carbon and mineral dust in snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau

Black carbon and mineral dust in snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau

Impacts of absorbing aerosol deposition on snowpack and hydrologic cycle in the Rocky Mountain region based on variable-resolution CESM (VR-CESM) simulations

A method to retrieve the spectral complex refractive index and single scattering optical properties of dust deposited in mountain snow

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