Snow Process Studies and Modeling to Improve Arctic Climate Prediction

明亮的表面(雪、冰川、海冰和云层)使北极特别容易受到地表光吸收碳(LAC，有时称为黑碳)和尘埃的辐射诱导效应，如冰-反照率反馈放大。这样的反馈可能会使脏雪在推动北极大气温度变化方面比温室气体更有效。在积雪、积雪老化、积雪融化、排水和类似的海冰过程的复杂北极环境中，肮脏的雪反馈在气溶胶生命周期中发生变化。该项目的目标是使用代表北极雪、LAC和尘埃的复杂地表生命周期的模式来评估北极耦合气候系统中吸收光的气溶胶相互作用，这些模式已经根据卫星、现场和实验室测量进行了评估。基金用于使用国际极年(IPY)现场和实验室测量来改进积雪微物理过程的表示；在北极陆地、大气和地球系统模式(ESM)的海冰部分实施和/或改进这些过程；以及使用ESM来提升和改进对20和21世纪北极气候强迫的有效性和响应的量化。

Bright surfaces (snow, glaciers, sea-ice, and clouds) make the Arctic uniquely susceptible to the radiatively-induced effects of surface light absorbing carbon (LAC, sometimes referred to as black carbon) and dust, such as ice-albedo feedback amplification. Such feedbacks may make dirty snow more efficacious than greenhouse gases in driving atmospheric temperature change in the Arctic. Dirty snow feedbacks change throughout the aerosol lifecycle in the complex Arctic environment of snowfall, snowpack aging, snow-melt, drainage, and analogous sea-ice processes. The goal of this project is to assess light absorbing aerosol interactions in the coupled Arctic climate system using models which represent the complex surface lifecycles of Arctic snow, LAC, and dust, and which have been evaluated against satellite, in-situ, and laboratory measurements.Funds are provided to use International Polar Year (IPY) field and laboratory measurements to improve the representation of snowpack microphysical processes; to implement and/or refine these processes in arctic land, atmosphere, and sea-ice components of an Earth System Model (ESM); and to use the ESM to upscale and improve quantification of the efficacy of and response to arctic climate forcing in the 20th and 21st centuries.