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Modeling albedo in the dry snow zone of the Greenland ice sheet

Eggeling, Johanna LU (2014) FYSK01 20141
Department of Physics
Combustion Physics
Abstract
Hirham5, a weather model developed at DMI, does not have a very good approximation for the snow albedo. To make the model better a snow albedo code, based on Dickenssen’s equation for snow albedo, was implemented in the model where the albedo depended on more variables than just the temperature. This change is important since the radiation contributes more to the melt than the temperature. The surface mass balance (SMB), which is the difference between accumulation and ablation, is also important for the albedo. A positive SMB often contributes to a higher albedo and a negative SMB contributes to a lower albedo. The main area in this project was to look at the snow albedo in the dry snow zone over Greenland. The snow code in the model made... (More)
Hirham5, a weather model developed at DMI, does not have a very good approximation for the snow albedo. To make the model better a snow albedo code, based on Dickenssen’s equation for snow albedo, was implemented in the model where the albedo depended on more variables than just the temperature. This change is important since the radiation contributes more to the melt than the temperature. The surface mass balance (SMB), which is the difference between accumulation and ablation, is also important for the albedo. A positive SMB often contributes to a higher albedo and a negative SMB contributes to a lower albedo. The main area in this project was to look at the snow albedo in the dry snow zone over Greenland. The snow code in the model made it possible to change the parameters and to see how a small change in one parameter could change the albedo drastically. Due to the short time this project had, only three different runs were made in the offline model of Hirham5, which ignores the vertical layers. Despite only three runs, the data gave quite interesting result which did differ from each other and could be analysed by comparing the albedo, SMB and snowmelt for January and July during different years. The result showed how important parameterisation is for the albedo and how hard it is to find reasonable values for the parameters. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Eggeling, Johanna LU
supervisor
organization
course
FYSK01 20141
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
language
English
id
4498690
date added to LUP
2017-07-04 15:48:15
date last changed
2017-07-04 15:48:15
@misc{4498690,
  abstract     = {{Hirham5, a weather model developed at DMI, does not have a very good approximation for the snow albedo. To make the model better a snow albedo code, based on Dickenssen’s equation for snow albedo, was implemented in the model where the albedo depended on more variables than just the temperature. This change is important since the radiation contributes more to the melt than the temperature. The surface mass balance (SMB), which is the difference between accumulation and ablation, is also important for the albedo. A positive SMB often contributes to a higher albedo and a negative SMB contributes to a lower albedo. The main area in this project was to look at the snow albedo in the dry snow zone over Greenland. The snow code in the model made it possible to change the parameters and to see how a small change in one parameter could change the albedo drastically. Due to the short time this project had, only three different runs were made in the offline model of Hirham5, which ignores the vertical layers. Despite only three runs, the data gave quite interesting result which did differ from each other and could be analysed by comparing the albedo, SMB and snowmelt for January and July during different years. The result showed how important parameterisation is for the albedo and how hard it is to find reasonable values for the parameters.}},
  author       = {{Eggeling, Johanna}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Modeling albedo in the dry snow zone of the Greenland ice sheet}},
  year         = {{2014}},
}