A wind-driven snow redistribution module for Alpine3D v3.3.0: adaptations designed for downscaling ice sheet surface mass balance

Eric Keenan, Nander Wever, Jan T. M. Lenaerts, and Brooke Medley

Data sets

Antarctic Snow Radar-Derived Relative Accumulation Product Marissa Dattler, Jan Lenaerts, and Brooke Medley https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3534315

Model code and software

snowpack-model/snowpack: f023b9f (f023b9f) N. Wever, E. Keenan, and snowpack-model https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5914787

EricKeenan/download_MERRA2: Download MERRA-2 (v1.0.0) Eric Keenan https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4560825

firelab/windninja: 3.7.1 (3.7.1) Kyle Shannon, Natalie Wagenbrenner, tfinney9, Jason Forthofer, lmnn3, and jeffreycunn https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4474633

EricKeenan/SNOWPACK_WAIS: Initial release of SNOWPACK_WAIS (v1.0.0) Eric Keenan https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5914751

EricKeenan/antarctic-windninja: Initial release of antarctic-windninja (v1.0.0) Eric Keenan https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5914727

snow-models David Wagner, Charles Fierz, Michael Lehning, and Mathias Bavay https://gitlabext.wsl.ch/snow-models

Short summary

Ice sheets gain mass via snowfall. However, snowfall is redistributed by the wind, resulting in accumulation differences of up to a factor of 5 over distances as short as 5 km. These differences complicate estimates of ice sheet contribution to sea level rise. For this reason, we have developed a new model for estimating wind-driven snow redistribution on ice sheets. We show that, over Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica, the model improves estimates of snow accumulation variability.