Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Blowing Snow At Mcmurdo Station, Antarctica During The Aware Field Campaign: Surface And Ceilometer Observations, Nicole A. Loeb, Aaron Kennedy

Atmospheric Sciences Faculty Publications

Blowing snow (BLSN) is an impactful process in cold climates, affecting regional thermodynamics, radiation properties, and the surface mass balance of snow. Though it has significant climatic impacts, the process is still poorly understood and not widely included in weather and climate models. In 2016, the AWARE Field Campaign saw the deployment of a large suite of in situ and remote sensing instruments to McMurdo Station, Antarctica allowing for investigation of BLSN. A ceilometer-based BLSN detection algorithm used elsewhere in Antarctica is applied to data from AWARE, yielding a BLSN frequency of 14.1% compared to 8.2% as detected by human …