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Cloud Macro-and Microphysical Properties as Coupled to Sea Ice Leads During the MOSAiC Expedition
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  • Pablo Saavedra Garfias,
  • Heike Kalesse-Los,
  • Luisa Von Albedyll,
  • Hannes Griesche,
  • Gunnar Spreen
Pablo Saavedra Garfias
Institute for Meteorology, Faculty of Physics and Geosciences, University of Leipzig

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Heike Kalesse-Los
Institute for Meteorology, Faculty of Physics and Geosciences, University of Leipzig
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Luisa Von Albedyll
Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Alfred Wegener Institute
Hannes Griesche
Leipzig Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS
Gunnar Spreen
Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Bremen

Abstract

This study presents the micro- and macrophysical cloud properties as a function of their surface coupling state with the sea ice during the wintertime of the MOSAiC field experiment. Cloud properties such as cloud base height, liquid- and ice water content have been previously found to have statistically distinguished features under the presence of sea ice leads (characterized by sea ice concentration, SIC) along downwind direction from the central observatory RV  Polarstern. Those findings are mainly in an increase of liquid water content, and favored occurrence of low level clouds as contrasted to situations when the clouds are thermodynamically decoupled.
The present contribution is an update considering two recent developments in the liquid detection in clouds and in the detection of sea ice leads. First, radar and lidar-based cloud droplet detection approaches like Cloudnet (Illingworth et al. 2007, Tukiainen et al. 2020) using Arctic wintertime observations and applied to measurements by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement mobile facility (ARM) instrumental suite on-board the RV Polarstern during  MOSAiC.
Secondly, we explore a new sea ice lead fraction product based on sea ice divergence. Sea ice divergence is estimated from sequential images of space-borne synthetic aperture radar with a spatial resolution of 700 m. The lead divergence product, being independent of cloud coverage, offers the unique advantage to detect opening leads at high spatial resolution.
Statistics for the wintertime cloud properties based on the coupling state with the sea ice concentration and sea ice lead fraction will be presented as an approach to study Arctic clouds and their interaction with sea ice.
09 Jan 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
17 Jan 2023Published in ESS Open Archive