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Evaluation of a high-resolution regional climate simulation over Greenland

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van Ypersele de Strihou, Jean-Pascal [UCL] Lefebre, Filip Fettweis, Xavier Marbaix, Philippe [UCL]

A simulation of the 1991 summer has been performed over south Greenland with a coupled atmosphere–snow regional climate model (RCM) forced by the ECMWF re-analysis. The simulation is evaluated with in-situ coastal and ice-sheet atmospheric and glaciological observations. Modelled air temperature, specific humidity, wind speed and radiative fluxes are in good agreement with the available observations, although uncertainties in the radiative transfer scheme need further investigation to improve the model’s performance. In the sub-surface snow-ice model, surface albedo is calculated from the simulated snow grain shape and size, snow depth, meltwater accumulation, cloudiness and ice albedo. The use of snow metamorphism processes allows a realistic modelling of the temporal variations in the surface albedo during both melting periods and accumulation events. Concerning the surface albedo, the main finding is that an accurate albedo simulation during the melting season strongly depends on a proper initialization of the surface conditions which mainly result from winter accumulation processes. Furthermore, in a sensitivity experiment with a constant 0.8 albedo over the whole ice sheet, the average amount of melt decreased by more than 60%, which highlights the importance of a correctly simulated surface albedo. The use of this coupled atmosphere snow RCM offers new perspectives in the study of the Greenland surface mass balance due to the represented feedback between the surface climate and the surface albedo, which is the most sensitive parameter in energybalance-based ablation calculations.

Document type Article de périodique (Journal article) – Article de recherche
Access type Accès interdit
Publication date 2005
Language Anglais
Journal information "Climate Dynamics" - , p. 100-116 (2005)
Peer reviewed yes
Publisher Springer
issn 0930-7575
e-issn 1432-0894
Publication status Publié
Affiliation UCL - SC/PHYS - Département de physique
Links
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Bibliographic reference van Ypersele de Strihou, Jean-Pascal ; Lefebre, Filip ; Fettweis, Xavier ; Marbaix, Philippe. Evaluation of a high-resolution regional climate simulation over Greenland. In: Climate Dynamics, , p. 100-116 (2005)
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/161623