Dynamical Properties of the Antarctic Circumpolar Vortex Inferred from Aircraft Observations

1990 ◽  
pp. 117-134
Author(s):  
D. L. Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Circumpolar Vortex ◽  
Aircraft Observations ◽  
Dynamical Properties ◽  
The Antarctic

scholarly journals Downslope föhn winds over the Antarctic Peninsula and their effect on the Larsen ice shelves

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 9481-9509 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. P. Grosvenor ◽  
J. C. King ◽  
T. W. Choularton ◽  
T. Lachlan-Cope
Keyword(s):  
Heat Flux ◽  
Wind Speed ◽  
Surface Energy ◽  
Antarctic Peninsula ◽  
Energy Budget ◽  
Surface Flux ◽  
Surface Energy Budget ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Aircraft Observations ◽  
The Antarctic

Abstract. Mesoscale model simulations are presented of a westerly föhn event over the Antarctic Peninsula mountain ridge and onto the Larsen C ice shelf, just south of the recently collapsed Larsen B ice shelf. Aircraft observations showed the presence of föhn jets descending near the ice shelf surface with maximum wind speeds at 250–350 m in height. Surface flux measurements suggested that melting was occurring. Simulated profiles of wind speed, temperature and wind direction were very similar to the observations. However, the good match only occurred at a model time corresponding to ~9 h before the aircraft observations were made since the model föhn jets died down after this. This was despite the fact that the model was nudged towards analysis for heights greater than ~1.15 km above the surface. Timing issues aside, the otherwise good comparison between the model and observations gave confidence that the model flow structure was similar to that in reality. Details of the model jet structure are explored and discussed and are found to have ramifications for the placement of automatic weather station (AWS) stations on the ice shelf in order to detect föhn flow. Cross sections of the flow are also examined and were found to compare well to the aircraft measurements. Gravity wave breaking above the mountain crest likely created a~situation similar to hydraulic flow and allowed föhn flow and ice shelf surface warming to occur despite strong upwind blocking, which in previous studies of this region has generally not been considered. Our results therefore suggest that reduced upwind blocking, due to wind speed increases or stability decreases, might not result in an increased likelihood of föhn events over the Antarctic Peninsula, as previously suggested. The surface energy budget of the model during the melting periods showed that the net downwelling short-wave surface flux was the largest contributor to the melting energy, indicating that the cloud clearing effect of föhn events is likely to be the most important factor for increased melting relative to non-föhn days. The results also indicate that the warmth of the föhn jets through sensible heat flux ("SH") may not be critical in causing melting beyond boundary layer stabilisation effects (which may help to prevent cloud cover and suppress loss of heat by convection) and are actually cancelled by latent heat flux ("LH") effects (snow ablation). It was found that ground heat flux ("GRD") was likely to be an important factor when considering the changing surface energy budget for the southern regions of the ice shelf as the climate warms.

scholarly journals In-situ aircraft observations of ice concentrations within clouds over the Antarctic Peninsula and Larsen Ice Shelf

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 17295-17345
Author(s):  
D. P. Grosvenor ◽  
T. W. Choularton ◽  
T. Lachlan-Cope ◽  
M. W. Gallagher ◽  
J. Crosier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antarctic Peninsula ◽  
Particle Production ◽  
Supercooled Liquid ◽  
Ice Crystals ◽  
Ice Crystal ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Aircraft Observations ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Larsen Ice Shelf

Abstract. In-situ aircraft observations of ice crystal concentrations in Antarctic clouds are presented for the first time. Orographic, layer and wave clouds around the Antarctic Peninsula and Larsen Ice shelf regions were penetrated by the British Antarctic Survey's Twin Otter Aircraft, which was equipped with modern cloud physics probes. The clouds studied were mostly in the free troposphere and hence ice crystals blown from the surface are unlikely to have been a major source for the ice phase. The temperature range covered by the experiments was 0 to −21°C. The clouds were found to contain supercooled liquid water in most regions and at heterogeneous ice formation temperatures ice crystal concentrations (60 s averages) were often less than 0.07 l−1, although values up to 0.22 l−1 were observed. Estimates of observed aerosol concentrations were used as input into the DeMott et al., 2010 ice nuclei (IN) parameterisation. The observed ice crystal number concentrations were generally in broad agreement with the IN predictions, although on the whole the predicted values were higher. Possible reasons for this are discussed and include the lack of IN observations in this region with which to characterise the parameterisation, and/or problems in relating ice concentration measurements to IN concentrations. Other IN parameterisations significantly overestimated the number of ice particles. Generally ice particle concentrations were much lower than found in clouds in middle latitudes for a given temperature. Higher ice crystal concentrations were sometimes observed at temperatures warmer than −9 °C, with values of several per litre reached. These were attributable to secondary ice particle production by the Hallett Mossop process. Even in this temperature range it was observed that there were regions with little or no ice that were dominated by supercooled liquid water. It is likely that in some cases this was due to a lack of seeding ice crystals to act as rimers to initiate secondary ice particle production. This highlights the complicated nature of this process and indicates that the accurate representation of it in global models is likely to represent a challenge. However, the contrast between Hallett Mossop zone ice concentrations and the fairly low concentrations of heterogeneously nucleated ice suggests that the Hallet Mossop process has the potential to be very important in remote, pristine regions such as around the Antarctic coast.

scholarly journals In-situ aircraft observations of ice concentrations within clouds over the Antarctic Peninsula and Larsen Ice Shelf

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 11275-11294 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. P. Grosvenor ◽  
T. W. Choularton ◽  
T. Lachlan-Cope ◽  
M. W. Gallagher ◽  
J. Crosier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antarctic Peninsula ◽  
Particle Production ◽  
Supercooled Liquid ◽  
Ice Crystals ◽  
Ice Crystal ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Aircraft Observations ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Larsen Ice Shelf

Abstract. In-situ aircraft observations of ice crystal concentrations in Antarctic clouds are presented for the first time. Orographic, layer and wave clouds around the Antarctic Peninsula and Larsen Ice shelf regions were penetrated by the British Antarctic Survey's Twin Otter aircraft, which was equipped with modern cloud physics probes. The clouds studied were mostly in the free troposphere and hence ice crystals blown from the surface are unlikely to have been a major source for the ice phase. The temperature range covered by the experiments was 0 to −21 °C. The clouds were found to contain supercooled liquid water in most regions and at heterogeneous ice formation temperatures ice crystal concentrations (60 s averages) were often less than 0.07 l−1, although values up to 0.22 l−1 were observed. Estimates of observed aerosol concentrations were used as input into the DeMott et al. (2010) ice nuclei (IN) parameterisation. The observed ice crystal number concentrations were generally in broad agreement with the IN predictions, although on the whole the predicted values were higher. Possible reasons for this are discussed and include the lack of IN observations in this region with which to characterise the parameterisation, and/or problems in relating ice concentration measurements to IN concentrations. Other IN parameterisations significantly overestimated the number of ice particles. Generally ice particle concentrations were much lower than found in clouds in middle latitudes for a given temperature. Higher ice crystal concentrations were sometimes observed at temperatures warmer than −9 °C, with values of several per litre reached. These were attributable to secondary ice particle production by the Hallett Mossop process. Even in this temperature range it was observed that there were regions with little or no ice that were dominated by supercooled liquid water. It is likely that in some cases this was due to a lack of seeding ice crystals to act as rimers to initiate secondary ice particle production. This highlights the chaotic and spatially inhomogeneous nature of this process and indicates that the accurate representation of it in global models is likely to represent a challenge. However, the contrast between Hallett Mossop zone ice concentrations and the fairly low concentrations of heterogeneously nucleated ice suggests that the Hallet Mossop process has the potential to be very important in remote, pristine regions such as around the Antarctic coast.

scholarly journals Downslope föhn winds over the Antarctic Peninsula and their effect on the Larsen Ice Shelves

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 5771-5835
Author(s):  
D. P. Grosvenor ◽  
J. C. King ◽  
T. W. Choularton ◽  
T. Lachlan-Cope
Keyword(s):  
Heat Flux ◽  
Surface Energy ◽  
Antarctic Peninsula ◽  
Energy Budget ◽  
Surface Flux ◽  
Surface Energy Budget ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Ground Heat Flux ◽  
Aircraft Observations ◽  
The Antarctic

Abstract. Mesoscale model simulations are presented of a westerly föhn event over the Antarctic Peninsula mountain ridge and onto the Larsen C Ice Shelf, just south of the recently collapsed Larsen B Ice Shelf. Aircraft observations showed the presence of föhn jets descending near to the ice shelf surface with maximum wind speeds at 250–350 m in height. Surface flux measurements suggested that melting was occurring. Simulated profiles of wind speed, temperature and wind direction were very similar to the observations. However, the good match only occurred at a model time corresponding to ∼9 h before the aircraft observations were made since the model föhn jets died down after this. Through comparison to an Automatic Weather Station (AWS) on the ice shelf surface (east side of the ridge) this was attributed to problems with the time evolution of the large scale meteorology of the analysis used to nudge the upper levels of the model. Timing issues aside, the otherwise good comparison between the model and observations gave confidence that the model flow structure was similar to that in reality. Details of the model jet structure are explored and discussed and are found to have ramifications for the placement of AWS stations on the ice shelf in order to detect föhn flow. Cross sections of the flow are also examined and were found to compare well to the aircraft measurements. Gravity wave breaking above the mountain crest likely created a situation similar to hydraulic flow and allowed föhn flow and ice shelf surface warming to occur despite strong upwind blocking, which in previous studies of this region has generally not been considered. The surface energy budget of the model during the melting periods showed that the net downwelling shortwave surface flux was the largest contributor to the melting energy, indicating that the cloud clearing effect of föhn events is likely to be the most important factor for increased melting relative to non-föhn days. The results also indicate that the warmth of the föhn jets through sensible heat flux may not be critical in causing melting beyond boundary layer stabilization effects (which may help to prevent cloud cover and suppress loss of heat by convection) and are actually cancelled by latent heat flux effects (snow ablation). It was found that ground heat flux was likely to be an important factor when considering the changing surface energy budget for the southern regions of the ice shelf as the climate warms.

From the Oort cloud to Halley-type comets

1999 ◽  
Vol 173 ◽  
pp. 327-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.A. Fernández ◽  
T. Gallardo
Keyword(s):  
Total Population ◽  
Complex Function ◽  
Dynamical Evolution ◽  
Oort Cloud ◽  
Capture Process ◽  
Influx Rate ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Dynamical Properties ◽  
Orbital Periods ◽  
Probability Of Capture

AbstractThe Oort cloud probably is the source of Halley-type (HT) comets and perhaps of some Jupiter-family (JF) comets. The process of capture of Oort cloud comets into HT comets by planetary perturbations and its efficiency are very important problems in comet ary dynamics. A small fraction of comets coming from the Oort cloud − of about 10−2− are found to become HT comets (orbital periods < 200 yr). The steady-state population of HT comets is a complex function of the influx rate of new comets, the probability of capture and their physical lifetimes. From the discovery rate of active HT comets, their total population can be estimated to be of a few hundreds for perihelion distancesq <2 AU. Randomly-oriented LP comets captured into short-period orbits (orbital periods < 20 yr) show dynamical properties that do not match the observed properties of JF comets, in particular the distribution of their orbital inclinations, so Oort cloud comets can be ruled out as a suitable source for most JF comets. The scope of this presentation is to review the capture process of new comets into HT and short-period orbits, including the possibility that some of them may become sungrazers during their dynamical evolution.

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