Summer Climate Interactions in the Arctic Basin

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Using a unique data set of ten spring-summer seasons, a series of hypotheses will be tested to define more precisely the seasonal and interannual variability of snow melt, surface albedo and late-summer ice extent, its climatic significance, and relationships with surface pressure fields and heights, temperature anomalies and other atmospheric indices. This will constitute an expansion of previous work under NSF support for 1) an initial study of snow melt/climate interactions based on four seasons (1977, 1979, 1984, 1985) of data and 2) the basic data set preparation only (no analysis) of six additional seasons (1975, 1978, 1980, 1986-1988). The analysis will be performed using digitized ten-season data sets of snow melt stages and parameterized surface albedo constructed from Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) imagery for May through mid-August and coincident sea ice and atmospheric data from other sources. The timing and extent of snow melt atop the Arctic pack ice is an important climatic forcing factor of northern high latitudes, with implications for the long-term mass balance and stability of the ice and potential climatic impacts in other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. It may also serve as an indicator of climatic change forced by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.