COMBLE: Studying Norwegian Sea’s Cold-Air Outbreaks

Description

Boreal and Arctic regions experience warming faster than the rest of Earth, and Arctic ice cover has declined faster than most earth system models predicted. Scientists have limited understanding of the cloud properties associated with cold-air outbreaks, a feature of Arctic systems that affect the global atmosphere, ocean circulation, and Earth’s energy balance. The Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Layer Experiment (COMBLE) campaign, operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement user facility, will deploy a mobile atmospheric observatory near the Norwegian Sea from January-May 2020 to measure the dynamics and properties of clouds and precipitation in the high-latitude marine boundary layer. In conjunction with the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, COMBLE will provide integrated data sets of dynamical, thermodynamic, and cloud microphysical characteristics of marine boundary layer convection in cold-air outbreaks, including cloud and aerosol properties. This data will improve process-level understanding, and accurate representation of Arctic warming in earth system models.