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The Effect of the Sea-ice Zone on the Development of Boundary-layer Roll Clouds During Cold Air Outbreaks

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Abstract

High latitude air–sea interaction is an important component of the earth’s climate system and the exchanges of mass and energy over the sea-ice zone are complicated processes that, at present, are not well understood. In this paper, we perform a series of numerical experiments to examine the effect of sea-ice concentration on the development of high latitude boundary-layer roll clouds. The experiments are performed at sufficiently high spatial resolution to be able to resolve the individual convective roll clouds, and over a large enough domain to be able to examine the roll’s downstream development. Furthermore the high spatial resolution of the experiments allows for an explicit representation of heterogeneity within the sea-ice zone. The results show that the sea-ice zone has a significant impact on the atmospheric boundary-layer development, which can be seen in both the evolution of the cloud field and the development of heat and moisture transfer patterns. In particular, we find the air-sea exchanges of momentum, moisture and heat fluxes are modified by the presence of the roll vortices (typically a 10% difference in surface heat fluxes between updrafts and downdrafts) and by the concentration and spatial distribution of the sea-ice. This suggests that a more realistic representation of processes over the sea-ice zone is needed to properly calculate the air-sea energy and mass exchange budgets.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S1A7

    A. Q. Liu & G. W. K. Moore

  2. Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    K. Tsuboki

  3. University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.

    I. A. Renfrew

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  1. A. Q. Liu
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  2. G. W. K. Moore
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  3. K. Tsuboki
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  4. I. A. Renfrew
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Correspondence to A. Q. Liu.

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Liu, A.Q., Moore, G.W.K., Tsuboki, K. et al. The Effect of the Sea-ice Zone on the Development of Boundary-layer Roll Clouds During Cold Air Outbreaks. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 118, 557–581 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-005-6434-4

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