Secondary ice production in summer clouds over the Antarctic coast: an underappreciated process in atmospheric models

Sotiropoulou, Georgia; Vignon, Étienne; Young, Gillian; Morrison, Hugh; O'Shea, Sebastian J.; Lachlan-Cope, Thomas; Berne, Alexis; Nenes, Athanasios

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-755-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-755-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-755-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 2

Research article

|

19 Jan 2021

Research article |

| 19 Jan 2021

Secondary ice production in summer clouds over the Antarctic coast: an underappreciated process in atmospheric models

Georgia Sotiropoulou, Étienne Vignon, Gillian Young, Hugh Morrison, Sebastian J. O'Shea, Thomas Lachlan-Cope, Alexis Berne, and Athanasios Nenes

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-755-2021-supplement

Data sets

Microphysics of Antarctic Clouds (MAC) project: in-situ airborne atmospheric measurements, model output and NAME dispersion footprints T. W. Choularton and Z. L. Fleming https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/43b756af495440ef8ab460d16926263f

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Short summary

Summer clouds have a significant impact on the radiation budget of the Antarctic surface and thus on ice-shelf melting. However, these are poorly represented in climate models due to errors in their microphysical structure, including the number of ice crystals that they contain. We show that breakup from ice particle collisions can substantially magnify the ice crystal number concentration with significant implications for surface radiation. This process is currently missing in climate models.