TY  - JOUR
AU  - GENTHON C., M. A. G. A. N. D. O.
PY  - 2009//
TI  - Do climate models underestimate snow accumulation on the Antarctic plateau? A re-evaluation of/from in situ observations in East Wilkes and Victoria Lands
JO  - Annals of glaciology
SP  - 61
EP  - 65
VL  - 50
KW  - polar regions
KW  - Antarctica
KW  - Diamond dust
KW  - Victoria Land
KW  - Wilkes Land
KW  - ground truth
KW  - Observation data
KW  - algorithm performance
KW  - Climate models
KW  - accumulation
KW  - Clear sky
KW  - atmospheric precipitation
KW  - mass balance
KW  - Glacier balance
KW  - ice sheets
KW  - Polar region
N2  - It has been suggested that meteorological and climate models underestimate snow accumulation on the Antarctic plateau, because accumulation (or surface mass balance (SMB)) is dominated by clear-sky precipitation while this process is not properly taken into account in the models. Here, we show that differences between model and field SMB data are much reduced when the in situ SMB reports used to evaluate the models are filtered through quality-control criteria and less reliable reports are subsequently left out. We thus argue that, although not necessarily unsupported, model biases and their interpretations in terms of clear-sky vs synoptic precipitation on the Antarctic plateau may have been overstated in the past. To avoid such misleading issues, it is important that in situ SMB reports of insufficient or unassessed reliability are discarded, even at the cost of a strong reduction in spatial sampling and coverage.
SN  - 0260-3055
N1  - exported from refbase (http://publi.ipev.fr/polar_references/show.php?record=5024), last updated on Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:07:07 +0200
ID  - GENTHONC.2009
ER  -