Characteristics of surface meteorology at Lindsey Island, Amundsen Sea, West Antarctica from 30 2008 to 2014

Abstract

Research on warming in West Antarctica is important to understand and predict mass balance change of the ice sheet over the region, which is directly connected to global sea level. Air temperature over West Antarctica is known to have increased moderately over past decades [e.g., Steig et al., 2009; Schneider et al., 2011; Ding et al., 2011; Bromwich et al., 2013]. However, it seems rather complicated to identify the dominant and direct cause for the warming. In addition, a lack of ground based measurements of meteorology across West Antarctica have limited better understanding of how the large area has been influenced by the warming through atmospheric processes and how fast the warming has progressed on the region. Some AWSs on West Antarctica have been operated long time and used to identify vast warming but their location is biased inland [e.g., Reusch and Alley, 2004; Bromwich et al., 2013]. Meteorology at coastal area should be different from that inland. Therefore, to better understand the processes of West Antarctica warming, climate at coastal area is required. In addition, meteorology at coastal area is also important in polyna, sea ice melting/formation and air-sea interaction nearWest Antarctica. An automatic weather station was setup at the Lindsey Island, Amundsen Sea close to the coastal area of West Antarctica in 2008 and has been operated for about seven years. Here, we present meteorological characteristics at the coastal area in Amundsen Sea through analyzing measured data at the site together with those from three AWSs at coastal area and two inland. To extend its characteristic over limited period, we compare them with reanalysis data to investigate long term change . Amundsen sea low indies are used to explain atmospheric variability at that region.