Surface cloud warming increases as Fall Arctic sea ice cover decreases | CU Experts

During the Arctic night, clouds regulate surface energy budgets through; longwave warming alone. During fall, any increase in low-level opaque; clouds will increase surface cloud warming and could potentially delay; sea ice formation. While an increase in clouds due to fall sea ice loss; has been observed, quantifying the surface warming is observationally; challenging. Here, we quantify surface cloud warming using spaceborne; lidar observations. By instantaneously co-locating surface cloud warming; and sea ice observations in regions where sea ice varies, we find; October large surface cloud warming values (> 80 W m-2) are; much more frequent (~+50%) over open water than over; sea ice. Notably, in November large surface cloud warming values; (> 80 W m-2) occur more frequently; (~+200%) over open water than over sea ice. These; results suggest more surface warming caused by low-level opaque clouds; in the future as open water persists later into the fall.

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