Toward a Better Surface Radiation Budget Analysis Over Sea Ice in the High Arctic Ocean: A Comparative Study Between Satellite, Reanalysis, and local‐scale Observations

Abstract

The Arctic is experiencing the fastest and most evident climate change on Earth (Serreze & Barry, 2011). Clouds and surface properties both play a crucial role in the surface energy budget of this region, as they determine the amount of shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) radiation in the lower atmosphere. The water content in super-cooled boundary layer clouds is also of particular importance for the Arctic region (e.g., Pithan et al., 2018) as atmospheric circulation patterns may be changing (Graham et al., 2017b). The surface energy budget, in turn, affects sea ice growth and melt, evaporation, atmospheric structure, and stability, with consequences for regional and large-scale meteorology and climate (Bintanja & Krikken, 2016; Bourassa et al., 2013; Döscher et al., 2014). However, due to present day limitations in observations and atmospheric reanalysis, understanding and predicting climate change over this sensitive region still remains limited (Kay et al., 2016). Both satellite and reanalysis products are often used for Arctic energy budget studies and aim to accurately represent cloud fraction, distribution and microphysical properties, as well as surface properties. However, it has been shown that both satellite-retrieved and model-simulated surface SW and LW radiation fields are largely biased in different seasons at high latitudes (

Cloud Characteristics during Intense Cold Air Outbreaks over the Barents Sea Based on Satellite Data

“…In particular, we used the CERES SYN1deg Ed4A product for the period of 2000-2018 [46,47]-this archive represents data regarding cloud properties and radiation fluxes on a regular grid, with a spatial resolution of 1 • × 1 • and an hourly time resolution. This product shows relatively good agreement with in situ cloud and radiation observations from the Arctic, especially over the open water regions [48], while over the sea ice, both shortwave and longwave fluxes are somewhat biased due to albedo and saturation effects [49]. In our study, we focus mainly on the ice-free regions over the central part of the BS, where we can rely on CERES remote sensing data.…”

“…For example, for the low-level clouds, the LWP anomaly varies from 15-20 g m −2 near the ice margin to more than 100 g/m −2 near the Kola Peninsula coast (Figure 5f). Larger LWP anomalies over land are not significant and may be due to uncertainties in LWP retrievals over the snow surface under conditions of a high solar zenith angle [48]. Positive low-level cloud base pressure anomalies (Figure 5e) indicate that clouds are lower during intense MCAOs compared to during average conditions.…”

Variability of Surface Radiation Budget over Arctic during Two Recent Decades from Perspective of CERES and ERA5 Data

“…A significant difference is indicated in LWD, which is closely related to clouds, so differences may occur depending on the cloud conditions used to generate the data [23,29,32]. In addition, the Arctic Ocean is a region composed of ice and sea ice, and the surface conditions are incredibly different, so there may be differences in radiation depending on the surface conditions [21,25,26,34]. Although the relationship between climatic factors and sub-radiative fluxes, such as longwave and shortwave, has been analyzed, it is difficult to understand the overall processes that drive the surface radiation budget changes.…”

“…The research focused on ice-albedo feedback, which accelerates global warming as the albedo decreases as sea ice decreases [19,21,26,30,31]. In the case of longwave, analyses of clouds and sea ice were carried out, among which many studies of longwave downwelling have been carried out [22,23,[32][33][34]. In the case of net radiation, long-term trend analysis [9,19], comprehensive research on energy budget [3], and the evaluation of products [4,17,18,35] were conducted.…”

Present‐Day Regional Antarctic Sea Ice Response to Extratropical Cyclones

“…In this study, we use ERA5 reanalysis data (Hersbach et al., 2020) to characterize Antarctic winter (June, July, and August; JJA) ETCs and their impacts on regional sea ice from 1990 to 2019 (ERA5 data is accessible at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home). We choose ERA5 because its output compares well to observations for sea surface temperature (SST), atmospheric moisture, and surface energy flux estimates at high latitudes (e.g., Di Biagio et al., 2021; Naakka et al., 2021; C. Yang et al., 2021) and has finer spatial resolution than other reanalysis products. ETCs are often fast‐moving and exist for a couple of days to a week (e.g., Tamarin‐Brodsky & Kaspi, 2017), so we use 6‐hourly ERA5 reanalysis data for cyclone detection (Section 2.2).…”