scholarly journals Evaporation over glacial lakes in Antarctica

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Shevnina ◽  
Miguel Potes ◽  
Timo Vihma ◽  
Tuomas Naakka ◽  
Pankaj R. Dhote ◽  
...  

Abstract. The water cycle in glacier hydrological networks is not well known in Antarctica. We present the first evaluations of evaporation over a glacial lake located in the Schirmacher oasis, Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica. Lake Zub/Priyadarshini is a shallow lake of the epiglacial type, and it is ice free for almost two months in summer (December–February). We evaluated evaporation over the ice free surface of Lake Zub/Priyadarshini using various methods including the eddy covariance (EC) method, the bulk aerodynamic method, and Dalton type empirical equations. The evaporation was estimated on the basis of data collected during a field experiment in December–February, 2017–2018, and regular observations at the nearest meteorological site. The EC was considered as the most accurate method providing the reference estimates for the evaporation over the lake surface. The EC method suggests that the mean daily evaporation was 3.0 mm day−1 in January, 2018. The bulk-aerodynamic method, based on observations at the lake shore as an input, yielded a mean daily evaporation of 2.3 mm day−1 for January. One of the Dalton type equations was better in estimating the summer mean evaporation, but the bulk aerodynamic method was much better in producing the day-to-day variations in evaporation. The summer evaporation over the ice-free Lake Zub/Priyadarshini exceeded the summer precipitation by a factor of 10. Hence, evaporation is a major term of the water balance of glacial lakes. Evaluation of the evaporation products of ERA5 reanalysis clearly demonstrated the need to add glacial lakes in the surface scheme of ERA5. Presently the area-averaged evaporation of ERA5 is strongly underestimated in the lake-rich region studied here.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2041
Author(s):  
Lisa Milani ◽  
Norman B. Wood

Falling snow is a key component of the Earth’s water cycle, and space-based observations provide the best current capability to evaluate it globally. The Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) on board CloudSat is sensitive to snowfall, and other satellite missions and climatological models have used snowfall properties measured by it for evaluating and comparing against their snowfall products. Since a battery anomaly in 2011, the CPR has operated in a Daylight-Only Operations (DO-Op) mode, in which it makes measurements primarily during only the daylit portion of its orbit. This work provides estimates of biases inherent in global snowfall amounts derived from CPR measurements due to this shift to DO-Op mode. We use CloudSat’s snowfall measurements during its Full Operations (Full-Op) period prior to the battery anomaly to evaluate the impact of the DO-Op mode sampling. For multi-year global mean values, the snowfall fraction during DO-Op changes by −10.16% and the mean snowfall rate changes by −8.21% compared with Full-Op. These changes are driven by the changes in sampling in DO-Op and are very little influenced by changes in meteorology between the Full-Op and DO-Op periods. The results highlight the need to sample consistently with the CloudSat observations or to adjust snowfall estimates derived from CloudSat when using DO-Op data to evaluate other precipitation products.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 1783
Author(s):  
Fenli Chen ◽  
Mingjun Zhang ◽  
Xixi Wu ◽  
Shengjie Wang ◽  
Athanassios A. Argiriou ◽  
...  

The proportional contribution of recycled moisture to local precipitation is a geographically dependent parameter that cannot be ignored in water budgets. Stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes are sensitive to environmental changes and can be applied to investigate the modern water cycle. In this study, a three-component mixing model is used to calculate the contribution of different water vapors (advection, evaporation and transpiration) to summer precipitation in Lanzhou city, Northwest China. The results show that for all sampling sites in Lanzhou, the contribution of advection vapor to precipitation is the largest, followed by the plant transpiration vapor, and the contribution of surface evaporation water vapor is usually the least, with the average values of 87.96%, 9.1% and 2.9%, respectively. The spatial differences of plant transpiration vapor are generally larger than those of advection vapor and surface evaporation vapor, and the high values appear in Yongdeng, Daheng and Gaolan.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xia Feng ◽  
Paul Houser

In this study, we developed a suite of spatially and temporally scalable Water Cycle Indicators (WCI) to examine the long-term changes in water cycle variability and demonstrated their use over the contiguous US (CONUS) during 1979–2013 using the MERRA reanalysis product. The WCI indicators consist of six water balance variables monitoring the mean conditions and extreme aspects of the changing water cycle. The variables include precipitation (P), evaporation (E), runoff (R), terrestrial water storage (dS/dt), moisture convergence flux (C), and atmospheric moisture content (dW/dt). Means are determined as the daily total value, while extremes include wet and dry extremes, defined as the upper and lower 10th percentile of daily distribution. Trends are assessed for annual and seasonal indicators at several different spatial scales. Our results indicate that significant changes have occurred in most of the indicators, and these changes are geographically and seasonally dependent. There are more upward trends than downward trends in all eighteen annual indicators averaged over the CONUS. The spatial correlations between the annual trends in means and extremes are statistically significant across the country and are stronger forP,E,R, andCcompared todS/dtanddW/dt.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (12) ◽  
pp. 6381-6405
Author(s):  
Mark R. Muetzelfeldt ◽  
Reinhard Schiemann ◽  
Andrew G. Turner ◽  
Nicholas P. Klingaman ◽  
Pier Luigi Vidale ◽  
...  

Abstract. High-resolution general circulation models (GCMs) can provide new insights into the simulated distribution of global precipitation. We evaluate how summer precipitation is represented over Asia in global simulations with a grid length of 14 km. Three simulations were performed: one with a convection parametrization, one with convection represented explicitly by the model's dynamics, and a hybrid simulation with only shallow and mid-level convection parametrized. We evaluate the mean simulated precipitation and the diurnal cycle of the amount, frequency, and intensity of the precipitation against satellite observations of precipitation from the Climate Prediction Center morphing method (CMORPH). We also compare the high-resolution simulations with coarser simulations that use parametrized convection. The simulated and observed precipitation is averaged over spatial scales defined by the hydrological catchment basins; these provide a natural spatial scale for performing decision-relevant analysis that is tied to the underlying regional physical geography. By selecting basins of different sizes, we evaluate the simulations as a function of the spatial scale. A new BAsin-Scale Model Assessment ToolkIt (BASMATI) is described, which facilitates this analysis. We find that there are strong wet biases (locally up to 72 mm d−1 at small spatial scales) in the mean precipitation over mountainous regions such as the Himalayas. The explicit convection simulation worsens existing wet and dry biases compared to the parametrized convection simulation. When the analysis is performed at different basin scales, the precipitation bias decreases as the spatial scales increase for all the simulations; the lowest-resolution simulation has the smallest root mean squared error compared to CMORPH. In the simulations, a positive mean precipitation bias over China is primarily found to be due to too frequent precipitation for the parametrized convection simulation and too intense precipitation for the explicit convection simulation. The simulated diurnal cycle of precipitation is strongly affected by the representation of convection: parametrized convection produces a peak in precipitation too close to midday over land, whereas explicit convection produces a peak that is closer to the late afternoon peak seen in observations. At increasing spatial scale, the representation of the diurnal cycle in the explicit and hybrid convection simulations improves when compared to CMORPH; this is not true for any of the parametrized simulations. Some of the strengths and weaknesses of simulated precipitation in a high-resolution GCM are found: the diurnal cycle is improved at all spatial scales with convection parametrization disabled, the interaction of the flow with orography exacerbates existing biases for mean precipitation in the high-resolution simulations, and parametrized simulations produce similar diurnal cycles regardless of their resolution. The need for tuning the high-resolution simulations is made clear. Our approach for evaluating simulated precipitation across a range of scales is widely applicable to other GCMs.


1999 ◽  
Vol 82 (6) ◽  
pp. 1399-1405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philemon Manirakiza ◽  
Adrian Covaci ◽  
Paul Schepens

Abstract A rapid and accurate method has been developed for the quantitative determination of capsaicin and its most important analogues, dihydrocapsaicin and nordihydrocapsaicin in chili peppers. These components were extracted with methylene chlo ride and separated from interfering substances with activated charcoal. Further cleanup on Florisil cartridges and elution with ethyl acetate were performed before gas chromatographic with mass spectrometric quantitation. The concentrations found were 440 ± 64 μg/g capsaicin, 81 ± 10 μg/g dihydrocapsaicin, and 11 ± 2 μg/g nordihydrocapsaicin. The mean recovery values for triplicate analysis were between 85-94%.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (10) ◽  
pp. 3829-3852 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisan Yu ◽  
Xiangze Jin ◽  
Simon A. Josey ◽  
Tong Lee ◽  
Arun Kumar ◽  
...  

Abstract This study provides an assessment of the uncertainty in ocean surface (OS) freshwater budgets and variability using evaporation E and precipitation P from 10 atmospheric reanalyses, two combined satellite-based E − P products, and two observation-based salinity products. Three issues are examined: the uncertainty level in the OS freshwater budget in atmospheric reanalyses, the uncertainty structure and association with the global ocean wet/dry zones, and the potential of salinity in ascribing the uncertainty in E − P. The products agree on the global mean pattern but differ considerably in magnitude. The OS freshwater budgets are 129 ± 10 (8%) cm yr−1 for E, 118 ± 11 (9%) cm yr−1 for P, and 11 ± 4 (36%) cm yr−1 for E − P, where the mean and error represent the ensemble mean and one standard deviation of the ensemble spread. The E − P uncertainty exceeds the uncertainty in E and P by a factor of 4 or more. The large uncertainty is attributed to P in the tropical wet zone. Most reanalyses tend to produce a wider tropical rainband when compared to satellite products, with the exception of two recent reanalyses that implement an observation-based correction for the model-generated P over land. The disparity in the width and the extent of seasonal migrations of the tropical wet zone causes a large spread in P, implying that the tropical moist physics and the realism of tropical rainfall remain a key challenge. Satellite salinity appears feasible to evaluate the fidelity of E − P variability in three tropical areas, where the uncertainty diagnosis has a global indication.


2010 ◽  
Vol 56 (199) ◽  
pp. 891-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerit Birnbaum ◽  
Johannes Freitag ◽  
Ralf Brauner ◽  
Gert König-Langlo ◽  
Elisabeth Schulz ◽  
...  

AbstractAnalyses of shallow cores obtained at the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) drilling site Kohnen station (75°00′ S, 00°04′ E; 2892 m a.s.l.) on the plateau of Dronning Maud Land reveal the presence of conserved snow dunes in the firn. In situ observations during three dune formation events in the 2005/06 austral summer at Kohnen station show that these periods were characterized by a phase of 2 or 3 days with snowdrift prior to dune formation which only occurred during high wind speeds of >10 m s-1 at 2 m height caused by the influence of a low-pressure system. The dune surface coverage after a formation event varied between 5% and 15%, with a typical dune size of (4 ± 2) m × (8 ± 3) m, a maximum height of 0.2 ± 0.1 m and a periodicity length of about 30 m. The mean density within a snow dune varied between 380 and 500 kg m-3, whereas the mean density at the surrounding surface was 330 ± 5 kgm-3. The firn cores covering a time-span of 22 ± 2 years reveal that approximately three to eight events per year occurred, during which snow dunes had been formed and were preserved in the firn.


2007 ◽  
Vol 53 (183) ◽  
pp. 558-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.S. Sunil ◽  
C.D. Reddy ◽  
M. Ponraj ◽  
Ajay Dhar ◽  
D. Jayapaul

Global positioning system (GPS) campaigns were conducted during the 2003 and 2004 austral summer seasons to obtain insight into the velocity and strain-rate distribution on Schirmacher Glacier, central Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica. GPS data were collected at 21 sites and analyzed to estimate the site coordinates, baselines and velocities. The short-term precision of the base station, MAIT, is estimated from the daily coordinate repeatability solutions during the two years. All GPS points on the glacier were constrained with respect to MAIT and nearby International GPS Service stations. Horizontal velocities of the glacier sites lie between 1.89 ± 0.01 and 10.88 ± 0.01 ma−1 to the north-northeast, with an average velocity of 6.21 ± 0.01 m a−1. The principal strain rates provide a quantitative measurement of extension rates, which range from (0.11 ± 0.01) × 10−3 to (1.48 ± 0.85) × 10−3a−1, and shortening rates, which range from (0.04 ± 0.02) × 10−3 to (0.96 ± 0.16) × 10−3a−1. The velocity and strain-rate distributions across the GPS network in Schirmacher Glacier are spatially correlated with topography, subsurface undulations, fracture zones/crevasses and the partial blockage of the flow by nunataks and the Schirmacher Oasis.


MAUSAM ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-624
Author(s):  
R.P. LAL ◽  
SURESH RAM

Hkkjr ekSle foKku foHkkx }kjk Hkkjrh; bysDVªks&dsfedy vkstksulkSans dh enn ls ,aVkdZfVdk ij Hkkjr ds nwljs LVs'ku eS=h ¼70-7 fMxzh n-] 11-7 fMxzh iw-½ ls vkstksu fLFkfr ¼izksQkby½ dk fu;fer eki fd;k tk jgk gSA ok;qeaMy ds mnxz LraHk esa vkstksu ds ?kuRo dh x.kuk iwjs o"kZ esa fy, x, lkIrkfgd vkstksu lkmfUMax ls dh tkrh gSA ok;qeaMyh; vkstksu dh mnxz fLFkfr ¼izksQkby vkSj vkstksu fNnz ¼gksy½ dh fo'ks"krkvksa dk v/;;u djus ds fy, flracj&vDVwcj ekg ds nkSjku cgqr ckj ifjKfIr;k¡ ¼lkmfUMax½ yh xbZ gSaA bl 'kks/k i= esa lrg ls 10 gsDVk ik- ds chp vkstksu vkSj rkieku ds ekfld ,oa okf"kZd vkSlr esa fofo/krk dh x.kuk ,oa fo'ys"k.k o"kZ 1999 ls 2007 dh vof/k esa fy, vkstksulkSans vkjksg.kksa ls fd;k x;k gSA bl v/;;u ls irk pyk gS fd vkstksu fNnz ds laca/k esa xgu vo{k; vDrwcj esa vkSj vYi ijUrq egRoiw.kZ vo{k; flracj ekg esa gqvk gSA vDrwcj esa yxHkx 250 ,oa 20 gs-ik- ds chp lcls lqLi"V vo{k; gqvk gS ftlesa vf/kdre LFkkuh; vkstksu ds Lrj esa 70 gs-ik- vkSj 10 gs- ik- ds Lrjksa ij vkSj flrEcj esa 70 gs- ik- ij fxjkoV  ns[kh xbZA fHkUu&fHkUu nkc Lrjksa ds fy, vkstksu dk rkieku ds lkFk lglaca/k ls ubZ tkudkfj;ksa vkSj vkstksu ifjorZu esa foLrkj dk irk pyk gSA iwjs o"kZ esa 300 ls 50 gs- ik- ds chp U;wure okf"kZd vkSlr rkieku -55 fMxzh ls -63 fMxzh lsaVhxzsM rd cnyrk gSA vxLr vkSj flrEcj ds eghuksa esa     70 gs- ik- rFkk 100 gs- ik- Lrjksa ij rkieku dk -80 fMxzh lsaVhxzsM ls de gksuk ,oa vDrwcj ekg esa 70 gs- ik- rFkk 100 gs- ik- Lrjksa ij yxHkx -70 fMxzh lsaVhxzsM ls de gksus dh fLFkfr dks vDrwcj ekg esa vkst+ksu vo{k; ds ladsrd ds :i esa ekuk tk ldrk gSA Regular ozone profile measurement over Antarctica has been made by India Meteorological Department over Indian second station Maitri (70.7° S, 11.7° E) with the help of Indian electro-chemical ozonesonde. Ozone density in the vertical column of the atmosphere is computed with weekly ozone soundings taken throughout the year. During the month of September- October more frequent soundings were taken to study vertical profile of atmospheric ozone and features of ozone hole. The mean monthly and yearly variation of ozone and temperature from surface to 10 hPa has been computed and analyzed from the ozonesonde ascents for the period 1999 to 2007. The study has shown profound depletion in October and lesser but substantial depletion in September, in association with the ozone hole. Depletion is most pronounced between about 250 and 20 hPa in October, with maximum local ozone losses near   70 hPa & 100 hPa levels and in September at 70 hPa. Ozone correlations with temperature for several pressure levels have revealed new insights into the causes and extent of ozone change. Lowest annual mean temperature varies from -55 to -63 °C between 300 to 50 hPa in all the year. The temperature less than -80 °C in months of August & September at 70 hPa & 100 hPa levels and about -70 °C in month of October at 70 hPa & 100 hPa levels can be attributed as an indicator of ozone depletion in months of October


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