Decreasing surface albedo signifies a growing importance of clouds for Greenland Ice Sheet meltwater production

J. C. Ryan (), L. C. Smith, S. W. Cooley, B. Pearson, N. Wever, E. Keenan and J. T. M. Lenaerts
Additional contact information
J. C. Ryan: University of Oregon
L. C. Smith: Brown University
S. W. Cooley: University of Oregon
B. Pearson: Oregon State University
N. Wever: University of Colorado
E. Keenan: University of Colorado
J. T. M. Lenaerts: University of Colorado

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Clouds regulate the Greenland Ice Sheet’s surface energy balance through the competing effects of shortwave radiation shading and longwave radiation trapping. However, the relative importance of these effects within Greenland’s narrow ablation zone, where nearly all meltwater runoff is produced, remains poorly quantified. Here we use machine learning to merge MODIS, CloudSat, and CALIPSO satellite observations to produce a high-resolution cloud radiative effect product. For the period 2003–2020, we find that a 1% change in cloudiness has little effect (±0.16 W m−2) on summer net radiative fluxes in the ablation zone because the warming and cooling effects of clouds compensate. However, by 2100 (SSP5-8.5 scenario), radiative fluxes in the ablation zone will become more than twice as sensitive (±0.39 W m−2) to changes in cloudiness due to reduced surface albedo. Accurate representation of clouds will therefore become increasingly important for forecasting the Greenland Ice Sheet’s contribution to global sea-level rise.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31434-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-31434-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31434-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().