HR: 1340h
AN: C33B-1124    [Abstracts]
TI: The influence of a more realistic representation of snow on sea ice: Results from a coupled, single column model
AU: * Sewall, J O
EM: jsewall@pmc.ucsc.edu
AF: University of California, Santa Cruz, Department of Earth Sciences 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
AU: Lipscomb, W
EM: lipscomb@lanl.gov
AF: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Group T-3 Mail Stop B216, Los Alamos, NM 87545
AU: Tulaczyk, S
EM: tulaczyk@pmc.ucsc.edu
AF: University of California, Santa Cruz, Department of Earth Sciences 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
AB: In the climate system, snow falls in discrete events and, consequently, is deposited in layers. Each layer, depending on initial properties and modification/exposure history has unique physical characteristics. The physical characteristics and number of layers of snow can have a significant influence on the surface energy budget. However, current generation sea ice models represent snow as a single layer with uniform physical properties and, consequently, have difficulty accurately representing surface fluxes over sea ice. In particular, the high-frequency variability that these models fail to capture may play an important role in the onset and end of the melt season which can, in turn, influence ice-albedo feedbacks and the entire polar climate system. We have coupled a single column version of the Los Alamos National Laboratory sea ice model (CICE) to the National Center for Atmospheric Research single column atmosphere model (SCAM). This coupled system is forced and validated with SHEBA (Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean) reanalysis and observational data to 1) identify the number of snow layers that most accurately represents surface fluxes at the ice/snow/atmosphere interface and 2) investigate the impact of updated and varying snow characteristics.
DE: 0736 Snow (1827, 1863)
DE: 0750 Sea ice (4540)
DE: 0770 Properties
DE: 0798 Modeling
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005