Breakout Summary Report

 

ARM/ASR User and PI Meeting

10 - 13 June 2019

Upcoming Arctic Campaigns (MOSAiC, COMBLE)
12 June 2019
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
60
Bart Geerts, Matt Shupe, Mikhail Ovchinnikov

Breakout Description

The Arctic system is in a state of rapid change with important implications for the regional and global climate system. ARM is well positioned to provide major insight into this changing system through a pair of upcoming field campaigns: The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition will take place from September 2019 to October 2020 within the Central Arctic ice pack and the Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Layer (COMBLE) experiment will take place from January to May 2020 on the northern Norway coast and on Bear Island in the Norwegian Sea. These experiments, in particular MOSAiC, represent some of the most sophisticated suites of instruments to ever be deployed in the Arctic and, based on their regional placement, are well designed to observe cloud and atmosphere processes related to large-scale flow both into, and out of, the Arctic. While each experiment is designed to address a targeted set of science questions, their regional and temporal proximity offers the unique ability to also leverage these experiments towards addressing numerous broader topics.

The first hour of this session covered the logistical preparations and scientific objectives of both Arctic experiments (talks by Powers, Shupe, and Geerts). A productive discussion resulted in the second hour, primarily intended to provide ideas for research that takes advantage of these promising data sets. Two such examples of possible future collaborative research were presented, one on the climatological patterns of CAOs in the Norwegian Sea (talk by Yonggang Wang) and one on the aerosol particles that Kerri Pratt and Jessie Creamean will collect for single-particle chemical analysis in MOSAiC.

Main Discussion

The presentations listed below should be available online. Here is a brief summary of the Q&A following each presentation:

1. AMF1/AMF2 status for COMBLE and MOSAiC - Heath Powers (Los Alamos). The good news is that ARM preparations for both campaigns is on track. For AMF1/COMBLE, a concern was mentioned about spare parts for instruments (e.g., radars) that are shipped directly from Argentina to Norway. It appears that ARM is well prepared to manage this risk. For AMF2/MOSAiC, it was noted that due to limited bandwidth of connection during the campaign, large-volume data will be shipped on disks at crew changes (~2-3 month intervals). It was suggested that, for the initial instrument performance verification, the first disk be brought back with the installation crew returning on Fedorov icebreaker at the end of October 2019.

2. MOSAiC Science Status - Matthew Shupe (NOAA/CIRES). MOSAiC is an impressive effort involving many agencies in the US and 17 countries, mainly Germany. A question was raised about data access and quarantine. ARM is the poster child in terms of data availability and accessibility; other groups have some data quarantine. Matt suggested that data access will be easier when individuals sign up to MOSAiC Consortium membership, which will be possible for everyone funded by ASR to conduct research with ARM measurements. While all MOSAiC data will be available by 1/1/23, individual researchers can also access non-released data from partners via collaboration with those partners. Matt presented several ideas for future research proposals using the wealth of MOSAiC data.

3. COMBLE Science Status - Bart Geerts (U. Wyoming). A question came up regarding the mechanism to call for Cold Air Outbreak conditions when extra sondes will be released from Andenes and Bear Island (3-hourly, i.e. 8/day). Bart discussed a forecast method to predict CAO conditions a few days in advance. Heath Powers informed us that ARM is budgeting for 227 extra sondes from Andenes, and 151 extra sondes from Bear Island. Just ~12 hours “heads-up” is needed for the Andenes autolauncher system to transition from 12-hourly to 3-hourly sondes, but at least 2 days for the Bear Island balloon launches, since they are done manually (crew duty limitations). Another question regarded coordination with and availability of Ny-Alesund (Svalbard) measurements. Paul Zieger and Ewan O’Connor indicated that they will coordinate.

4. Climatology of wintertime Arctic cold-air outbreaks derived from ERA5 reanalysis data and AROME-Arctic weather model - Yonggang Wang (Texas Tech U). Jimmy Booth commented that CAO intensity could be measured in different ways other than M value, e.g., BL depth, and that SST itself mattered. Matt Shupe asked about the apparent higher frequency of thermal instability (M>0) further south at Andenes; this was explained by the “contamination” from katabatic flow from Scandinavia itself, rather than the Arctic; requiring onshore flow in addition to thermal instability reduces the frequency of suitable conditions to ~20% at Andenes.

5. Arctic trace gases, aerosol, and snow chemical composition in MOSAiC - Kerri Pratt (U. Michigan). Kerri called for collaboration opportunities for single-particle chemical analysis since this work is labor-intensive. A call was made for coordination in prioritizing analysis periods and selective processing strategies for instruments requiring similar labor-intensive post-processing of data. There was a nice discussion about logging of notable events or conditions in the field in MOSAiC to help guide post-field data analysis; specifically, the discussion aimed to identify the research priorities. Two concepts evolved: 1) It is important to understand the background evolution of the system, providing the seasonal and annual cycle perspective. 2) Targeting specific events, such as those related to airmass transitions, etc.

6. Brief overview of Arctic-scenario for LASSO (i.e., MOSAiC focus option) - Matthew Shupe. This meeting confirmed that there is much interest in an Arctic Cloud scenario for LASSO modelling efforts, but this effort will take time as it requires a robust, well QC-ed and well-constrained MOSAiC data set. The community was encouraged to express their interest in LASSO activities.

7. Open discussion on leveraging Arctic activities. Discussion topics included: the leveraging the different Arctic campaigns? Joint analyses, shared back-trajectory analyses bother for warm-air intrusions (towards the Polarstern) and cold-air outbreaks (for COMBLE). Thoughts on the best way to support use of these campaigns in model studies. Some proposal and analysis ideas were raised. Dave Turner asked about the daily broadcasting of the Polarstern’s location, which Matt said should be possible. There was further discussion on potential areas-of-focus for DOE-led modeling studies targeting these Arctic campaigns; while no decisions were made, the discussion has provided some important foundation for further coordination on the topic. Lastly, the need for a synoptic-scale classification for the MOSAiC-COMBLE time frame was identified, and then further suggested as a great potential research project that could focus on identification of the large-scale meteorology and its impact on the airmass regimes that affect warm air intrusions into the Arctic and cold air outbreaks out of the Arctic.

Needs

Some key needs identified through the discussions are summarized here.

  • As a community, we need to identify important aerosol and meteorological regimes to support analysis of aerosol samples that require a great deal of sample analysis time (i.e., we cannot analyze all data initially). Such environmental/synoptic regime classification is useful also for other studies (surface fluxes, BL structure, clouds, precipitation, etc.) and a coordinated effort enables consistency in comparisons between regimes. Specific decisions were not made, but key people were identified and some analysis objectives were clarified.
  • For MOSAiC and COMBLE, we need trajectory analyses and a means for classifying the large-scale meteorological state. These activities would support a broad community of associated scientists and help to identify certain conditions of interest for various analyses.
  • It was noted that the modeling community (and likely the satellite community) requires information from MOSAiC on the ship location in real time to enable extraction of operational data at that location.