Chapter 5

A Review of the Factors Influencing Arctic Mixed-Phase Clouds: Progress and Outlook

Ivy Tan

Ivy Tan

Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, McGill University, Montreal, Canada; formerly at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, USA, and affiliated with University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA

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Georgia Sotiropoulou

Georgia Sotiropoulou

Department of Meteorology, and Bolin Center for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden; currently at the Department of Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Laboratory of Atmospheric Processes and their Impacts, School of Architecture, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

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Patrick C. Taylor

Patrick C. Taylor

Climate Science Branch, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, USA

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Lauren Zamora

Lauren Zamora

Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

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Manfred Wendisch

Manfred Wendisch

Leipzig Institute for Meteorology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

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First published: 15 December 2023
Citations: 4
Book Series:Geophysical Monograph Series

Summary

Mixed-phase clouds are ubiquitous in the Arctic and play a critical role in Earth's energy budget at the surface and top-of-the-atmosphere. These clouds typically occupy the lower and mid-level troposphere and are composed of purely supercooled liquid droplets or mixtures of supercooled liquid water droplets and ice crystals. Here, we review progress in our understanding of the factors that control the formation and dissipation of Arctic mixed-phase clouds, including the thermodynamic structure of the lower troposphere, warm and moist air intrusions into the Arctic, large-scale subsidence, and aerosol particles. We then provide a brief survey of numerous Arctic field campaigns that targeted local cloud-controlling factors and follow this with specific examples of how the Arctic Cloud Observations Using airborne measurements during polar Day (ACLOUD)/ Physical feedback of Arctic PBL, Sea ice, Cloud And AerosoL (PASCAL) and Airborne measurements of radiative and turbulent FLUXes of energy and momentum in the Arctic boundary layer (AFLUX) field campaigns that took place in the vicinity of Svalbard in 2019 were able to advance our understanding on this topic to demonstrate the value of field campaigns. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the outlook of future research in the study of Arctic cloud-controlling factors and provide several recommendations for the observational and modeling community to advance our understanding of the role of Arctic mixed-phase clouds in a rapidly changing climate.