Abstract
With the Arctic rapidly changing, the needs to observe, understand, and model the changes are essential. To support these needs, an annual cycle of observations of atmospheric properties, processes, and interactions were made while drifting with the sea ice across the central Arctic during the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition from October 2019 to September 2020. An international team designed and implemented the comprehensive program to document and characterize all aspects of the Arctic atmospheric system in unprecedented detail, using a variety of approaches, and across multiple scales. These measurements were coordinated with other observational teams to explore crosscutting and coupled interactions with the Arctic Ocean, sea ice, and ecosystem through a variety of physical and biogeochemical processes. This overview outlines the breadth and complexity of the atmospheric research program, which was organized into 4 subgroups: atmospheric state, clouds and precipitation, gases and aerosols, and energy budgets. Atmospheric variability over the annual cycle revealed important influences from a persistent large-scale winter circulation pattern, leading to some storms with pressure and winds that were outside the interquartile range of past conditions suggested by long-term reanalysis. Similarly, the MOSAiC location was warmer and wetter in summer than the reanalysis climatology, in part due to its close proximity to the sea ice edge. The comprehensiveness of the observational program for characterizing and analyzing atmospheric phenomena is demonstrated via a winter case study examining air mass transitions and a summer case study examining vertical atmospheric evolution. Overall, the MOSAiC atmospheric program successfully met its objectives and was the most comprehensive atmospheric measurement program to date conducted over the Arctic sea ice. The obtained data will support a broad range of coupled-system scientific research and provide an important foundation for advancing multiscale modeling capabilities in the Arctic.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 00060 |
Journal | Elementa |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 7 2022 |
Funding
– German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) through financing the Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz Zentrum für Polar-und Meeresforschung (AWI) and the Polarstern expedition PS122 under grant N-2014-H-060_Dethloff – AWI through its projects: AWI_ATMO, AWI_ICE, AWI_SNOW – US National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (OPP-1724551, OPP-1805569, OPP-1807496, OPP-1914781, OPP-1852614, OPP-1753423, OPP-1753418, OPP-1753408) – US Department of Energy—Office of Science Atmospheric Radiation Measurement and Atmo-spheric System Research Programs (DE-SC0019251, DE-SC0021341, DE-SC0019745, DE-SC0019172, DE-AC05-76RL01830) This work was carried out, and data used in this manuscript were produced, as part of the international Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) with the tag MOSAiC20192020. We thank all persons involved in the expedition of the Research Vessel Polarstern during MOSAiC in 2019–2020 (AWI_PS122_00) as listed in Nixdorf et al. (2021). A subset of data was obtained from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility Managed by the Biological and Environmental Research Program. Instrumentation from the University of Leeds was provided by the Atmospheric Measurement Observations Facility (AMOF) or the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS). JS holds the Ingvar Kamprad chair for extreme environments research. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers; their constructive comments have helped to improve the manuscript. This work was funded by
Keywords
- Arctic
- Atmosphere
- Field campaign