Arctic Precipitation Analysis from the Arctic System Reanalysis (ASR): 2000-2012

Abstract:

Recent Arctic Amplification (AA), (e.g. the warming trend in the Arctic that is larger than for the Northern Hemisphere or the global average), is strongly linked to declining sea ice extent (SIE) [Serreze and Barry, 2011]. Precipitation over the Arctic Ocean is projected to increase thorough the twenty-first century, in part linked to AA and SIE decline [Kattsov et al., 2007; Bintanja and Selten, 2014]. Since mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is a key element in sea level rise through the end of this century, it is important to understand how precipitation may change in the future and impact the GrIS mass balance. As the first step, we need to better understand how current ice loss may be impacting precipitation over the ice sheet. Towards this end, monthly precipitation data from the Arctic System Reanalysis (ASR) is compared with gauge observations over Greenland. ASR is a high-resolution regional assimilation of model output developed as a resource for the detection and diagnosis of change in the coupled Arctic climate system [Bromwich et al., 2015]. In order to explore linkages between precipitation over Greenland and the surrounding SIE, ASR forecast precipitation data and SIE data from the NASA Team Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer and Special Sensor Microwave/Imager data set [Cavalieri et al., 1999] are statistically analyzed from 2000 to 2012. As a case study, spatial distributions of precipitation and pressure at the surface and in the middle troposphere over the Arctic are analyzed during the great Arctic cyclone of August 2012 [Simmonds and Rudeva, 2012; Parkinson and Comiso, 2013; Zhang et al., 2013].