Observability of moisture transport divergence  in Arctic atmospheric rivers by dropsondes

Dorff, Henning; Konow, Heike; Schemann, Vera; Ament, Felix

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-8771-2024

Articles | Volume 24, issue 15

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-8771-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-8771-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 15

Research article

|

09 Aug 2024

Research article |

| 09 Aug 2024

Observability of moisture transport divergence in Arctic atmospheric rivers by dropsondes

Henning Dorff, Heike Konow, Vera Schemann, and Felix Ament

Data sets

Arctic regional reanalysis on pressure levels from 1991 to present H. Schyberg et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/CDS.E3C841AD

ERA5 hourly data on pressure levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.bd0915c6

Tracking Atmospheric Rivers Globally as Elongated Targets (tARget) Bin Guan https://doi.org/10.25346/S6/YO15ON

Model code and software

Scientific Code for Observability of Moisture Transport Divergence in Arctic Atmospheric Rivers by Dropsondes (v1.0) Henning Dorff https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11967471

Short summary

Using synthetic dropsondes, we assess how discrete spatial sampling and temporal evolution during flight affect the accuracy of real sonde-based moisture transport divergence in Arctic atmospheric rivers (ARs). Non-instantaneous sampling during temporal AR evolution deteriorates the divergence values more than spatial undersampling. Moisture advection is the dominating factor but most sensitive to the sampling method. We suggest a minimum of seven sondes to resolve the AR divergence components.