Greenland ice sheet; peripheral glaciers and ice caps; rainfall climatology; regional climate model; statistical downscaling; tundra; Geophysics; Atmospheric Science; Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous); Space and Planetary Science
Abstract :
[en] A daily, gridded 1-km rainfall climatology (1958–2020) for Greenland is presented, including the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS), the peripheral glaciers and ice caps (GIC), and ice-free tundra. It is obtained by statistically downscaling the 5.5 km output of the regional atmospheric climate model version 2 to a resolution of 1 km, using the elevation dependence of snowfall fraction. Based on this new product, the average total annual rainfall in Greenland during 1958–2020 is estimated to be 111.4 ± 11.2 Gt/year, of which 28.6 ± 6.1 Gt/year falls on the GrIS, 11.4 ± 1.4 Gt/year on the GIC, and 71.4 ± 9.0 Gt/year on the tundra. The downscaled 1 km product better resolves especially the relatively small GIC, more than doubling (+124%) their rainfall compared to the 5.5 km product. The relatively warm southern regions of Greenland have the highest rainfall amounts, with annual values locally exceeding 1,000 mm. We confirm a significant positive trend in Greenland rainfall (>40 mm/decade), notably in the northwest and mainly due to an increase in rainfall fraction (>3.5%/decade) during July and August. For the whole of Greenland, during 1991–2020 the seasonal rainfall peak has shifted from July to August, with significant increases in September, which receives more rain than June. An analysis of rainfall fraction and near-surface temperature shows that local warming rates are a good predictor of recent rainfall changes.
Disciplines :
Earth sciences & physical geography
Author, co-author :
Huai, Baojuan ; College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
van den Broeke, Michiel R. ; Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
Reijmer, Carleen H. ; Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
Noël, Brice ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géographie > Climatologie et Topoclimatologie ; Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
Language :
English
Title :
A Daily 1-km Resolution Greenland Rainfall Climatology (1958–2020) From Statistical Downscaling of a Regional Atmospheric Climate Model
We acknowledge support from the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC) and PROTECT, this project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program (grant no. 869304), PROTECT contribution number 41. This work was also funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (42171121, 41701059). B. Noël was funded by the NWO VENI grant VI.Veni.192.019. The authors thank Qinglin Zhang (Shandong Normal University) for technical support.We acknowledge support from the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC) and PROTECT, this project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program (grant no. 869304), PROTECT contribution number 41. This work was also funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (42171121, 41701059). B. Noël was funded by the NWO VENI grant VI.Veni.192.019. The authors thank Qinglin Zhang (Shandong Normal University) for technical support.
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