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Accurate multidecadal radiative flux records are vital to understand Arctic amplification and constrain climate model uncertainties. Uncertainty in the NASA Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES)-derived irradiances is larger over sea ice than any other surface type and comes from several sources. The year-long Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition in the central Arctic provides a rare opportunity to explore uncertainty in CERES-derived radiative fluxes. First, a systematic and statistically robust assessment of surface shortwave and longwave fluxes was conducted using in situ measurements from MOSAiC flux stations. The CERES Synoptic 1degree (SYN1deg) product overestimates the downwelling shortwave flux by +11.40 Wm–2 and underestimates the upwelling shortwave flux by –15.70 Wm–2 and downwelling longwave fluxes by –12.58 Wm–2 at the surface during summer. In addition, large differences are found in the upwelling longwave flux when the surface approaches the melting point (approximately 0°C). The biases in downwelling shortwave and longwave fluxes suggest that the atmosphere represented in CERES is too optically thin. The large negative bias in upwelling shortwave flux can be attributed in large part to lower surface albedo (–0.15) in satellite footprint relative to surface sensors. Additionally, the results show that the spectral surface albedo used in SYN1deg overestimates albedo in visible and mid-infrared bands. A series of radiative transfer model perturbation experiments are performed to quantify the factors contributing to the differences. The CERES-MOSAiC broadband albedo differences (approximately 20 Wm–2) explain a larger portion of the upwelling shortwave flux difference than the spectral albedo shape differences (approximately 3 Wm–2). In addition, the differences between perturbation experiments using hourly and monthly MOSAiC surface albedo suggest that approximately 25% of the sea ice surface albedo variability is explained by factors not correlated with daily sea ice concentration variability. Biases in net shortwave and longwave flux can be reduced to less than half by adjusting both albedo and cloud inputs toward observed values. The results indicate that improvements in the surface albedo and cloud data would substantially reduce the uncertainty in the Arctic surface radiation budget derived from CERES data products.
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Merged Datasets for the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) Central Observatory in the Arctic Ocean (2019-2020)
The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) produced a wealth of observational data along the drift of the R/V Polarstern in the Arctic Ocean from October 2019 to September 2020. These data can further process-level understanding and improvements in models. However, the observational records contain temporal gaps and are provided in different formats. One goal of the MOSAiC Single Column Model Working Group (MSCMWG: https://mosaic-expedition.org/science/cross-cutting_groups/) is to provide consistently-formatted, gap-filled, merged datasets representing the conditions at the MOSAiC Central Observatory (the intensively studied region within a few km of R/V Polarstern) that are suitable for driving models on this spatial domain (e.g., single column models, large eddy simulations, etc). The MSCMWG is an open group, please contact the dataset creators if you would like to contribute to future versions of these merged datasets (including new variables). This dataset contains version 1 of these merged datasets, and comprises the variables necessary to force a single column ice model (e.g., Icepack: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.1213462). The atmospheric variables are primarily derived from Met City (~66 percent (%) of record, https://doi.org/10.18739/A2PV6B83F), with temporal gaps filled by bias and advection corrected data from Atmospheric Surface Flux Stations ( https://doi.org/10.18739/A2XD0R00S, https://doi.org/10.18739/A25X25F0P, https://doi.org/10.18739/A2FF3M18K). Some residual gaps in shortwave radiation were filled with ARM ship-board radiometer data. Three different options for snowfall precipitation rate (prsn) are provided, based on in-situ observations that precipitation greatly exceeded accumulation on level ice, and accumulation rates varied on different ice types. MOSAiC_kazr_snow_MDF_20191005_20201001.nc uses 'snowfall_rate1' derived from the vertically-pointing, ka-band radar on the vessel (https://doi.org/10.5439/1853942). MOSAiC_Raphael_snow_fyi_MDF_20191005_20201001.nc and MOSAiC_Raphael_snow_syi_MDF_20191005_20201001.nc use snow accumulation measurements from manual mass balance sites (https://doi.org/10.18739/A2NK36626) to derived a pseudo-precipitation. MOSAiC_Raphael_snow_fyi_MDF_20191005_20201001.nc is based on the First Year Ice (fyi) sites. MOSAiC_Raphael_snow_syi_MDF_20191005_20201001.nc is based on the Second Year Ice (syi) sites. The other atmospheric variables for these files are identical. Oceanic variables are in MOSAiC_ocn_MDF_20191006_20200919.nc and are derived from https://doi.org/10.18739/A21J9790B. The data are netCDF files formatted according to the Merged Data File format (https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2413, https://gitlab.com/mdf-makers/mdf-toolkit). The code 'recipes' that were used to produce these data are available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10819497. If you use these datasets, please also cite the appropriate publications: Meteorological variables (excluding precipitation): Cox et al., 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02415-5) Oceanographic variables: Schulz et al., 2023 (https://doi.org/10.31223/X5TT2W) KAZR-derived precipitation: Matrosov et al., 2022 (https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2021.00101) Accumulation-derived pseudo-precipitation: Raphael et al., in review. The following are known issues that will be addressed in future dataset releases: 1. Residual gaps occupy approximately 20% of the data record (see addendum) 2. Some transitions to shiprad downwelling shortwave are unreasonable abrupt 3. MDF format does not currently include a field for point-by-point data source Addendum: For atmospheric variables, below indicates the percentage sourced from each dataset (and the amount missing a.k.a NaN) Air Temperature metcity 0.661943 NaN 0.193333 asfs30 0.134910 asfs40 0.008607 asfs50 0.001207 Specific Humidity metcity 0.658890 NaN 0.196298 asfs40 0.008695 Wind Velocity metcity 0.666334 NaN 0.255003 asfs30 0.068828 asfs40 0.008630 asfs50 0.001205 Downwelling Longwave metcity 0.549417 asfs30 0.241502 NaN 0.209081 Downwelling Shortwave metcity 0.674166 NaN 0.158814 asfs30 0.140794 shipradS1 0.026226 Note that the 21 day gap from the end of Central Observatory 2 to the start of Central Observatory 3 occupies 5.8% of the record.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2138788
- PAR ID:
- 10560873
- Publisher / Repository:
- NSF Arctic Data Center
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Other: text/xml
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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