The Role of Summer Snowstorms on Seasonal Arctic Sea Ice Loss

Abstract

The Arctic near-surface atmosphere has warmed at more than twice the rate of the global average over recent decades, while summer sea ice coverage has reduced by around 50% (Walsh, 2014). The positive ice-albedo feedback along with several other feedback mechanisms have contributed to these rapid changes (Goosse et al., 2018;Serreze & Barry, 2014). Because the Arctic climate is generally dry, where column-integrated water vapor on seasonal time scales is less than ∼20 mm even in the wettest summer (Rinke et al., 2019;Serreze & Barry, 2014;Serreze et al., 1995), winter snow accumulation is generally limited to ∼20-30 cm in the Eurasian and the Pacific Seas (

The Effects of Summer Snowfall on Arctic Sea Ice Radiative Forcing

“…Namely, since our events start with no snow on the ice surface, the increase in surface albedo during the event will generally be greater than if a snow layer was already present. Despite the different methodologies, we also found an average of ∼2 snow accumulation events per grid cell in the Arctic each year, which agrees with the Lim et al (2022) study's 2-3 storm events per year.…”

“…For example, they estimated that a 0.01 increase in albedo may increase upwelling shortwave radiation at the surface by 2.0-3.5 W m 2 based on the CERES climatological mean (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019). Our results from Equation 6for June-August 2003-2017 (excluding May for an equivalent comparison) show a change of 12.3 W m 2 at the surface when considering an 80% cloud cover and a 203 W m 2 mean surface irradiance (Hartmann, 2016) as done by Lim et al (2022). While including cloud cover in our estimate decreases the amount of energy reflected at the surface, the main difference between our findings is based on the different definitions of a snow event.…”

“…Relatively little is known about summer snowfall on Arctic sea ice. Most research on this topic relates to the winter months, but a few studies have documented individual summer snowfall events and the effects that they can have on the progression of ice melt (Light et al, 2015;Lim et al, 2022;Perovich et al, 2002Perovich et al, , 2017. The 19 June 1998 snowfall during the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) expedition is a welldocumented example of such an event during which four cm of fresh snow caused an increase in albedo from 0.20 to 0.80 over areas of bare sea ice and refrozen ponds before returning to pre-snow values two days later (Perovich et al, 2002).…”

“…Lim et al. (2022) found that the snowstorms were also associated with about a week of below‐freezing surface air temperatures, which allowed the new snow to persist. Using a sea ice model, they found that cold temperatures were the main driver behind a positive sea ice extent anomaly of 1.2 × 10 5 km 2 associated with snowstorms.…”

Cold season Arctic strong cyclones enhance Atlantification of the Arctic Ocean

“…The Arctic Ocean is covered by sea ice year-round, historically covering approximately half of the Arctic Ocean (Stroeve et al 2007). However, in recent years, accelerated Arctic warming and increased ice melt have resulted in rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and a range of other impacts (Nghiem et al 2006, Previdi et al 2021, Simmonds and Li 2021, Lim et al 2022, Rantanen et al 2022, Sumata et al 2023.…”