Identification

Title

Mixed-phase clouds cause climate model biases in Arctic wintertime temperature inversions

Abstract

Temperature inversions are a common feature of the Arctic wintertime boundary layer. They have important impacts on both radiative and turbulent heat fluxes and partly determine local climate-change feedbacks. Understanding the spread in inversion strength modelled by current global climate models is therefore an important step in better understanding Arctic climate and its present and future changes. Here, we show how the formation of Arctic air masses leads to the emergence of a cloudy and a clear state of the Arctic winter boundary layer. In the cloudy state, cloud liquid water is present, little to no surface radiative cooling occurs and inversions are elevated and relatively weak, whereas surface radiative cooling leads to strong surface-based temperature inversions in the clear state. Comparing model output to observations, we find that most climate models lack a realistic representation of the cloudy state. An idealised single-column model experiment of the formation of Arctic air reveals that this bias is linked to inadequate mixed-phase cloud microphysics, whereas turbulent and conductive heat fluxes control the strength of inversions within the clear state.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7ff3t9r

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2014-07-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact