Satellite remote sensing of regional and seasonal Arctic cooling showing a multi-decadal trend towards brighter and more liquid clouds

Lelli, Luca; Vountas, Marco; Khosravi, Narges; Burrows, John Philipp

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-2579-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-2579-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-2579-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 4

Research article

|

23 Feb 2023

Research article |

| 23 Feb 2023

Satellite remote sensing of regional and seasonal Arctic cooling showing a multi-decadal trend towards brighter and more liquid clouds

Luca Lelli, Marco Vountas, Narges Khosravi, and John Philipp Burrows

Data sets

Pan-Arctic spectral reflectances at the top-of-atmosphere between 1996 and 2018 Luca Lelli, Marco Vountas, Narges Khosravi, and John Philip Burrows https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.933905

GOME-2 Level 1B Fundamental Data Record Release 3 - Metop-A and -B EUMETSAT https://doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SEC_CLM_0039

ESA Cloud Climate Change Initiative (ESA Cloud\_cci) data: Cloud\_cci AVHRR-PM L3C/L3U CLD\_PRODUCTS v3.0 Martin Stengel, Oliver Sus, Stefan Stapelberg, Stephan Finkensieper, Benjamin W\"urzler, Daniel Philipp, Rainer Hollmann, and Caroline Poulsen, https://doi.org/10.5676/DWD/ESA_Cloud_cci/AVHRR-PM/V003

Spectral albedo of sea ice and melt ponds measured during POLARSTERN cruise ARK-XXVII/3 (IceArc) in 2012 L. Istomina, M. Nicolaus, and D. K. Perovich https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.815111

Model code and software

CDO User Guide Uwe Schulzweida https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7112925

The Generic Mapping Tools Version 6 (https://www.generic-mapping-tools.org/) P. Wessel, J. F. Luis, L. Uieda, R. Scharroo, F. Wobbe, W. H. F. Smith, and D. Tian https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GC008515

Short summary

Arctic amplification describes the recent period in which temperatures have been rising twice as fast as or more than the global average and sea ice and the Greenland ice shelf are approaching a tipping point. Hence, the Arctic ability to reflect solar energy decreases and absorption by the surface increases. Using 2 decades of complementary satellite data, we discover that clouds unexpectedly increase the pan-Arctic reflectance by increasing their liquid water content, thus cooling the Arctic.