Greenland ice sheet rainfall climatology, extremes and atmospheric river rapids
Box, Jason E.; Nielsen, Kristian P.; Yang, Xiaohua; Niwano, Masashi; Wehrlé, Adrien; van As, Dirk; Fettweis, Xavier; Køltzow, Morten A.Ø.; Palmason, Bolli; Fausto, Robert S.; van den Broeke, Michiel R.; Huai, Baojuan; Ahlstrøm, Andreas P.; Langley, Kirsty; Dachauer, Armin; Noël, Brice
(2023) Meteorological Applications, volume 30, issue 4, pp. 1 - 24
(Article)
Abstract
Greenland rainfall has come into focus as a climate change indicator and from a variety of emerging cryospheric impacts. This study first evaluates rainfall in five state-of-the-art numerical prediction systems (NPSs) (CARRA, ERA5, NHM-SMAP, RACMO, MAR) using in situ rainfall data from two regions spanning from land onto the ice
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sheet. The new EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Arctic Regional ReAnalysis (CARRA), with a relatively fine (2.5 km) horizontal grid spacing and extensive within-model-domain observational initialization, has the lowest average bias and highest explained variance relative to the field data. ERA5 inland wet bias versus CARRA is consistent with the field data and other research and is presumably due to more ERA5 topographic smoothing. A CARRA climatology 1991–2021 has rainfall increasing by more than one-third for the ice sheet and its peripheral ice masses. CARRA and in situ data illuminate extreme (above 300 mm per day) local rainfall episodes. A detailed examination CARRA data reveals the interplay of mass conservation that splits flow around southern Greenland and condensational buoyancy generation that maintains along-flow updraft ‘rapids’ 2 km above sea level, which produce rain bands within an atmospheric river interacting with Greenland. CARRA resolves gravity wave oscillations that initiate as a result of buoyancy offshore, which then amplify from terrain-forced uplift. In a detailed case study, CARRA resolves orographic intensification of rainfall by up to a factor of four, which is consistent with the field data.
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Keywords: CARRA, extremes, Greenland ice sheet, rainfall, Atmospheric Science
ISSN: 1350-4827
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Note: Funding Information: We thank two anonymous reviewers and David A. Lavers at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts for constructive comments. CARRA and ERA5 data are courtesy of the EU Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S) programme. GEUS field observations of rainfall used in this study were supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (INTAROS, grant no. 727890) and the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities via The Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE). The C3S Arctic regional reanalysis project has been supported by EU C3S contract 2017/C3S_322_Lot2_METNO/SC2. B. Noël was funded by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique de Belgique (F.R.S.‐FNRS). M. Niwano was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science through Grants‐in‐Aid for Scientific Research number JP17KK0017 and JP21H03582. M. van den Broeke acknowledges support of the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC). Funding Information: We thank two anonymous reviewers and David A. Lavers at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts for constructive comments. CARRA and ERA5 data are courtesy of the EU Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S) programme. GEUS field observations of rainfall used in this study were supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (INTAROS, grant no. 727890) and the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities via The Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE). The C3S Arctic regional reanalysis project has been supported by EU C3S contract 2017/C3S_322_Lot2_METNO/SC2. B. Noël was funded by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique de Belgique (F.R.S.-FNRS). M. Niwano was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science through Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research number JP17KK0017 and JP21H03582. M. van den Broeke acknowledges support of the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Meteorological Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Meteorological Society.
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