Vapour and precipitation measurements on land, ship, and research aircraft in coordination with hydrographic and atmospheric measurements during the IGP project, from 28 Feb to 20 March 2018
The Iceland-Greenland Seas Project targeted coordinated measurements of the ocean and atmosphere state in the region between Iceland and Greenland to characterise the air-sea exchange during spring time, when heat fluxes are strongest (Renfrew et al. 2019). The SNOWPACE project could use the opportunity of the IGP campaign to add on isotope observations on the aircraft, on a research vessel, and on land. Such a measurement setup allowed for the observation of complete cycles of the atmospheric processing of water vapour from evaporation, to atmospheric transport, and precipitation. During one period, the IGP measurement region acted as an evaporation source for precipitation in Norway. Spatial event-based precipitation sampling in Southern Norway for isotope analysis enabled directly linked measurements along the moisture transport path.
Field data from the SNOWPACE IGP contribution are archived on the CEDA database, and will be released along with related publications (currently in preparation). The dataset has been separated into 3 components:
SNOWPACE IGP Masin (vapour isotopes from research aircraft)
SNOWPACE IGP Alliance (vapour isotopes and precipitation samples onboard research vessel)
SNOWPACE IGP Iceland (vapour isotopes from coastal station and precipitation samples in Iceland)
The SNOWPACE IGP dataset, sampling approach, and an analysis of the coherence of isotope measurements and the spatial representativeness is presented in a forthcoming publication (Sodemann et al., in prep.). A detailed analysis of the airborne measurements, including the processing of the dataset shows the imprint of sea ice and evaporation on the vapour isotope composition (Touzeau et al., in prep.). A comparison of airborne isotope measurements with a suite of isotope-enabled model simulations illustrates approaches to model-data comparisons (Golid, 2019). The usefulness of the vapour isotope composition in the boundary layer as an indicator of airmass processing upstream in the case of a convective marine boundary layer is demonstrated in Duscha et al., 2022 (accepted manuscript). A general overview of the IGP project, including how the SNOWPACE contribution has been embedded in the overall project, is provided within Renfrew et al., 2019. See citing references of that study for other related IGP publications.
References
Sodemann et al., in prep.
Touzeau et al., in prep.
Golid, 2019
Duscha et al., 2022 (accepted manuscript)
Renfrew et al., 2019