Moisture budget estimates derived from airborne observations in an Arctic atmospheric river during its dissipation

Dorff, Henning; Ewald, Florian; Konow, Heike; Mech, Mario; Ori, Davide; Schemann, Vera; Walbröl, Andreas; Wendisch, Manfred; Ament, Felix

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-8329-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 14

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-8329-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

HALO-(AC)³ – an airborne campaign to study air...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-8329-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 14

Research article

|

31 Jul 2025

Research article |

| 31 Jul 2025

Moisture budget estimates derived from airborne observations in an Arctic atmospheric river during its dissipation

Henning Dorff, Florian Ewald, Heike Konow, Mario Mech, Davide Ori, Vera Schemann, Andreas Walbröl, Manfred Wendisch, and Felix Ament

Data sets

Unified Airborne Active and Passive Microwave Measurements over Arctic Sea Ice and Ocean during the HALO-(AC)³ Campaign in Spring 2022 H. Dorff et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.963250

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

Dropsonde measurements from HALO and POLAR 5 during HALO-(AC) 3 in 2022 G. George et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.968891

Model code and software

Scientific Code for Moisture Budget Closure Analysis in Atmospheric River from HALO-(AC)³ v.1.0.3 H. Dorff https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15407230

Short summary

Using observations of an Arctic atmospheric river (AR) from a long-range research aircraft, we analyse how moisture transported into the Arctic by the AR is transformed and how it interacts with the Arctic environment. The moisture transport divergence is the main driver of local moisture change over time. Surface precipitation and evaporation are rather weak when averaged over extended AR sectors, although considerable heterogeneity of precipitation within the AR is observed.