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Surface energy balance, melt and sublimation at Neumayer Station, East Antarctica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2009

Michiel van den Broeke ,
Gert König-Langlo ,
Ghislain Picard ,
Peter Kuipers Munneke  and
Jan Lenaerts
Michiel van den Broeke*
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht (IMAU), The Netherlands
Gert König-Langlo
Affiliation:
Alfred Wegener Institute for Marine and Polar Research (AWI), Bremerhaven, Germany
Ghislain Picard
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Géophysique de l’Environnement (LGGE), Grenoble, France
Peter Kuipers Munneke
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht (IMAU), The Netherlands
Jan Lenaerts
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht (IMAU), The Netherlands
*
*[email protected]
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Abstract

A surface energy balance model is forced by 13 years of high-quality hourly observations from the Antarctic coastal station Neumayer. The model accurately reproduces observed surface temperatures. Surface sublimation is significant in summer, when absorbed solar radiation heats the surface. Including a first order estimate of snowdrift sublimation in the calculation more than triples the total sublimation, removing 19% of the solid precipitation, indicating that snowdrift sublimation is potentially important for the mass balance of Antarctic ice shelves. Surface melt occurs at Neumayer in all summers, but all the meltwater refreezes. In two-thirds of the cases, the refreezing is quasi-instantaneous (within the model timestep of 6 min), so that no liquid water remains in the snow. For all other events, the occurrence of liquid water in the snowpack at Neumayer agrees well with satellite-based liquid water detection.

Keywords

solar radiationsnowpacksurface temperatures
Type
Physical Sciences
Information
Antarctic Science , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 87 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Antarctic Science Ltd 2009

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