Surface winds over Antarctica are among the strongest and most persistent on Earth. These winds profoundly shape the surface conditions on the ice sheet, breaking the surface temperature inversion, and transporting snow. Coupled climate models used for IPCC projections have too low resolution to reproduce the katabatic forcing, and as a result, projections assume that katabatic winds are stationary in time. However, there are too few sustained observations to precisely describe the temporal variability of Antarctic surface winds.
Here we propose to give new insight on surface wind variability by (1) developing a proxy for wind intensity in ice cores and providing the first wind reconstruction at decadal scale for the past 1000 years, (2) studying the drivers of surface wind intensity and the impact of climate change in the polar oriented regional model MAR, and (3) providing new observational constraints on the impact of katabatic winds on the near surface snow and moisture transport.
Madame Anais Orsi (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement)
The author of this summary is the project coordinator, who is responsible for the content of this summary. The ANR declines any responsibility as for its contents.
LSCE Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement
Université de Liège / Departement de Géographie
Help of the ANR 246,576 euros
Beginning and duration of the scientific project:
December 2019
- 48 Months