Modeled Antarctic Precipitation. Part I: Spatial and Temporal Variability

Abstract

Surface snow accumulation is the primary mass input to the Antarctic ice sheets. As the dominant term among various components of surface snow accumulation (precipitation, sublimation/deposition, and snow drift), precipitation is of particular importance in helping to assess the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheets and their contribution to global sea level change. The Polar MM5, a mesoscale atmospheric model based on the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University?NCAR Mesoscale Model, has been run for the period of July 1996 through June 1999 to evaluate the spatial and temporal variability of Antarctic precipitation. Drift snow effects on the redistribution of surface snow over Antarctica are also assessed with surface wind fields from Polar MM5 in this study. It is found that areas with large drift snow transport convergence and divergence are located around escarpment areas where there is considerable katabatic wind acceleration. It is also found that the drift snow transport generally diverges over most areas of East and West Antarctica with relatively small values. The use of the dynamic retrieval method (DRM) to calculate precipitation has been developed and verified for the Greenland ice sheet. The DRM is also applied to retrieve the precipitation over Antarctica from 1979 to 1999 in this study. Most major features in the spatial distribution of Antarctic accumulation are well captured by the DRM results. In comparison with predicted precipitation amounts from atmospheric analyses and reanalyses, DRM calculations capture more mesoscale features of the precipitation distribution over Antarctica. A significant upward trend of +1.3 to +1.7 mm yr?2 for 1979?99 is found from DRM and forecast precipitation amounts for Antarctica that is consistent with results reported by other investigators and indicates that an additional 0.05 mm yr?1 is being extracted from the global ocean and locked up in the Antarctic ice sheets. While there is good agreement in this trend among all of the datasets, the interannual variability about the trend on the continental scale is not well captured. However, on the subcontinental scale, the interannual variability about the trend is well resolved for sectors in West Antarctica and the South Atlantic. It is also noted that the precipitation trend is weakly downward over much of the continent.