Observations of marine cold-air outbreaks: a comprehensive data set of airborne and dropsonde measurements from the Springtime Atmospheric Boundary Layer Experiment (STABLE)

Abstract

Abstract. In March 2013, the Springtime Atmospheric Boundary Layer Experiment (STABLE) was carried out in the Fram Strait region and over Svalbard to investigate atmospheric convection and boundary layer modifications due to interactions between sea ice, the atmosphere, and open water. A major goal was the observation of marine cold-air outbreaks (MCAOs), which are typically characterised by the transport of very cold air masses from the ice-covered ocean over a relatively warm water surface and which often affect local and regional weather conditions. During STABLE, MCAOs were observed on 4 d within a period displaying a strongly northward-shifted sea ice edge north of Svalbard and, thus, with an unusually large Whaler's Bay polynya. The observations mainly consisted of in situ measurements from airborne instruments and of measurements by dropsondes. Here, we present the corresponding data set from a total of 15 aircraft vertical profiles and 22 dropsonde releases. Besides an overview of the flight patterns and instrumentation, we provide a detailed presentation of the individual quality-processing mechanisms, which ensure that the data can be used, for example, for model validation. Moreover, we discuss the effects of the individual quality-processing mechanisms, and we briefly present the main characteristics of the MCAOs based on the quality-controlled data. All 37 data series are published on the World Data Center PANGAEA (Lüpkes et al., 2021a, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.936635).

Thermodynamic and cloud evolution in a cold-air outbreak during HALO-(AC)3: quasi-Lagrangian observations compared to the ERA5 and CARRA reanalyses

“…CAOs have been studied intensively using satellite data (Sarkar et al, 2019;Christensen et al, 2020;Wu and Ovchinnikov, 2022;Murray-Watson et al, 2023;Mateling et al, 2023), atmospheric soundings (Dahlke et al, 2022;Geerts et al, 2022;Michaelis et al, 2022), and dedicated (mostly airborne) field campaigns (such as reported by Shapiro et al, 1987;Brümmer, 1996;Geerts et al, 2022;Sanchez et al, 2022;Mech et al, 2022a;Michaelis et al, 2022;Sorooshian et al, 2023). The models applied to represent CAOs range from turbulence-resolving large eddy simulations (Tomassini et al, 2017;Tornow et al, 2021;Li et al, 2022) to mesoscale numerical weather prediction models (Vihma and Brümmer, 2002;Tomassini et al, 2017; to global climate models (Kolstad and Bracegirdle, 2007;Smith and Sheridan, 2021).…”