A comprehensive measurement suite to study Arctic system processes at MOSAiC

Poster PDF

Description

The central Arctic has undergone substantial change over the past couple decades, embodied by a vastly diminished sea-ice cover. As a result, the Arctic is opening to more human activities that require an improved ability to model the system on a range of temporal and spatial scales. Atmospheric processes pose some of the greatest challenges to modelling abilities in the central Arctic. These challenges are in part due to a dearth of detailed observations in this environment, but also due to the complexity of atmospheric processes and their interactions with the changing surface. Specific priority areas for central Arctic atmospheric research involve clouds, aerosols, precipitation processes, the boundary layers, and the roles that these play in the surface energy budget. Additionally, it is essential to understand the many interactions between the atmosphere and other aspects of the Arctic system including the sea ice, upper ocean, and biogeochemical processes. The Multi-disciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) will provide a unique opportunity to examine these Arctic processes and their contribution to the coupled Arctic system in great detail over a full annual cycle. A major contribution to this project will be made by the US Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program with the deployment of the ARM Mobile Facility and Mobile Aerosol Observing System onboard the research vessel Polarstern. These facilities include a vast array of instruments to comprehensively measure the Arctic atmospheric system and address specific science themes including: (1) The surface energy budget of sea ice; (2) cloud and precipitation properties; (3) aerosol concentration and composition; and (4) the stable and unstable atmospheric boundary layer. Jointly these measurements, in coordination with others made during MOSAiC, will help to provide a process-level understanding of the Arctic system and specifically of how the atmosphere couples with other sub-systems. They will also provide the basis for evaluating and improving process models and process representations in larger-scale models. This poster will present an overview of MOSAiC with special emphasis on the ARM measurement systems, and outline the specific science research that will be enabled by this project.