Recent surface mass balance from Syowa Station to Dome F, East Antarctica: comparison of field observations, atmospheric reanalyses, and a regional atmospheric climate model

Abstract

Stake measurements at 2 km intervals are used to determine the spatial and temporal surface mass balance (SMB) in recent decades along the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition traverse route from Syowa Station to Dome F. To determine SMB variability at regional scales, this traverse route is divided into four regions, i.e., coastal, lower katabatic, upper katabatic and inland plateau. We also perform a regional evaluation of large scale SMB simulated by the regional atmospheric climate model versions 2.1 and 2.3 (RACMO2.1 and RACMO2.3), and the four more recent global reanalyses. Large-scale spatial variability in the multi-year averaged SMB reveals robust relationships with continentality and surface elevation. In the katabatic regions, SMB variability is also highly associated with surface slope, which in turn is affected by bedrock topography. Stake observation records show large inter-annual variability in SMB, but did not indicate any significant trends over both the last 40 years for the coastal and lower katabatic regions, and the last 20 years record for the upper katabatic and inland plateau regions. The four reanalyses and the regional climate model reproduce the macro-scale spatial pattern well for the multi-year averaged SMB, but fail to capture the mesoscale SMB increase at the distance interval ~300 to ~400 km from Syowa station. Thanks to the updated scheme in the cloud microphysics, RACMO2.3 shows the best spatial agreement with stake measurements over the inland plateau region. ERA-interim, JRA-55 and MERRA exhibit high agreement with the inter-annual variability of observed SMB in the coastal, upper katabatic and inland plateau regions, and moderate agreement in the lower katabatic region, while NCEP2 and RACMO2.1 inter-annual variability shows no significant correlation with the observations for the inland plateau region.