Updated cloud physics improve the modelled near surface climate of Antarctica of a regional atmospheric climate model
Journal Article
Overview
abstract
Abstract. The physics package of the polar version of the regional atmospheric climate model RACMO2 has been updated from RACMO2.1 to RACMO2.3. The update constitutes, amongst others, the inclusion of a parameterization for cloud ice super-saturation, an improved turbulent and radiative flux scheme and a changed cloud scheme. In this study the effects of these changes on the modelled near-surface climate of Antarctica are presented. Significant biases remain, but overall RACMO2.3 better represents the near-surface climate in terms of the modelled surface energy balance, based on a comparison with > 750 months of data from nine automatic weather stations located in East Antarctica. Especially the representation of the sensible heat flux and net longwave radiative flux has improved with a decrease in biases of up to 40 %. These improvements are mainly caused by the inclusion of ice super-saturation, which has led to more moisture being transported onto the continent, resulting in more and optically thicker clouds and more downward longwave radiation. As a result, modelled surface temperatures have increased and the bias, when compared to 10 m snow temperatures from 64 ice core observations, has decreased from −2.3 K to −1.3 K. The weaker surface temperature inversion consequently improves the representation of the sensible heat flux, whereas wind speed remains unchanged.;
