Abstract:
High-resolution simulations of near-surface (1.5 m) temperature and (10 m) zonal and meridional winds over the Brunt Ice Shelf in the Antarctic for the year 2015 were conducted using the atmosphere-only Met Office Unified Model by the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK. The datasets produced were necessary to place point meteorological measurements from the various automatic weather stations on the Brunt Ice Shelf into a wider spatial context by identifying spatial temperature gradients and investigating how such gradients may have affected the homogeneity of the composite Halley temperature record.
The work formed part of the core science undertaken at the British Antarctic Survey.
Keywords:
Antarctica, Brunt Ice shelf, Halley, high-resolution regional climate modelling, temperature
Orr, A., & Phillips, T. (2021). Fine-scale atmosphere-only model simulation of near-surface temperature and wind from a reanalysis-driven Met Office Unified Model simulation of the Brunt Ice Shelf for the year 2015 (Version 1.0) [Data set]. UK Polar Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council, UK Research & Innovation. https://doi.org/10.5285/20f3bf27-bf33-4c21-8164-005667b2ddb8
| Use Constraints: | This data is governed by the NERC data policy http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/policy/ and supplied under Open Government Licence v.3 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/. |
|---|
| Creation Date: | 2021-01-06 |
|---|---|
| Dataset Progress: | Complete |
| Dataset Language: | English |
| ISO Topic Categories: |
|
| Parameters: |
|
| Personnel: | |
| Name | UK PDC |
| Role(s) | Metadata Author |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Name | Andrew Orr |
| Role(s) | Investigator, Technical Contact |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Name | Tony Phillips |
| Role(s) | Investigator |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Parent Dataset: | N/A |
| Reference: | King, J. C., J. Turner, S. Colwell, H. Lu, A. Orr, T. Phillips, J. S. Hosking, and G. J. Marshall, 'Inhomogeneity of the surface air temperature record from Halley, Antarctica', J. Climate, submitted. | |
|---|---|---|
| Quality: | Comparison of the model output with the automatic weather station data on Brunt Ice Shelf demonstrated that: i) the model accurately captured the temporal variability of both temperature and wind speed, ii) model temperatures were biased cold, and iii) wind speed and direction were simulated accurately. | |
| Lineage: | We carried out a high-resolution atmosphere-only model simulation of the Brunt Ice Shelf and surrounding area for 2015, using the nested configuration of version 11.1 of the UK Met Office Unified Model (MetUM). The inner model domain had a horizontal resolution of 1.5 km (consisting of 250 × 250 grid points), covering the Brunt Ice Shelf and surrounding area. This domain was nested within a larger outer domain with a horizontal resolution of 4 km (consisting of 200 × 200 grid points), covering a much larger part of the area surrounding the Brunt Ice Shelf. Both domains had 70 vertical levels up to an altitude of 40 km and used a rotated latitude-longitude grid. In order to construct a broadly reasonable coastline of the Brunt Ice Shelf in the innermost domain for the 2015 period, the model coastline and orography was revised using an up-to-date digital elevation model based on the TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X Add-On for Digital Elevation Measurement) 90-m digital elevation model. The science configuration of the dynamics and physics schemes used by the nested models was the mid-latitude regional atmosphere configuration (RA1-M). The required start data and lateral boundary conditions for the nested domains were supplied by a global version run of the MetUM at N512 resolution (1024 × 768 grid points, equivalent to a horizontal resolution of ~25 km at mid-latitudes), which was itself initialised by the ERA-Interim reanalysis. The model was used to produce a series of 24 hour forecasts, initialised every 12 hours, for the period 01 January 2015, 0000UTC to 31 December 2015, 1200UTC. The initial 12 hours of each forecast was discarded as spin-up, with the remaining part of the forecasts concatenated together to form a continuous time-series for 2015. | |
| Temporal Coverage: | |
|---|---|
| Start Date | 2015-01-01 |
| End Date | 2016-01-01 |
| Spatial Coverage: | |
| Latitude | |
| Southernmost | -77.452 |
| Northernmost | -73.596 |
| Longitude | |
| Westernmost | -34.099 |
| Easternmost | -17.007 |
| Altitude | |
| Min Altitude | 0m |
| Max Altitude | 10m |
| Depth | |
| Min Depth | N/A |
| Max Depth | N/A |
| Data Resolution: | |
| Latitude Resolution | 0.015 |
| Longitude Resolution | 0.015 |
| Horizontal Resolution Range | 1 km - < 10 km or approximately .01 degree - < .09 degree |
| Vertical Resolution | N/A |
| Vertical Resolution Range | N/A |
| Temporal Resolution | N/A |
| Temporal Resolution Range | N/A |
| Location: | |
| Location | Antarctica |
| Detailed Location | Brunt Ice Shelf |
| Data Collection: | The model used was version 11.1 of the Met Office Unified Model. |
|---|
| Distribution: | |
|---|---|
| Distribution Media | Online Internet (HTTP) |
| Distribution Size | 1.6 GB |
| Distribution Format | N/A |
| Fees | N/A |
| Data Storage: | The data are provided in the form of CF-compliant netCDF-4 files, with one file containing each data variable. The horizontal coordinate system is defined using CF-compliant rotated_latitude_longitude grid mapping variables, and the true latitude and longitude coordinates are provided in each file as auxiliary coordinates. The wind variables are provided as both grid-directed wind components and as zonal and meridional wind components. This dataset also includes the MetUM surface altitude and land/sea binary mask fields. All the variables are provided on the rotated lat/lon grids on which they were output by the MetUM. Consequently, the grid for the wind variables is offset by half a grid point spacing in both X and Y grid directions compared to the grid for the temperature, surface altitude and land/sea mask fields, and contains one additional grid point in the Y direction only. This dataset consists of the following 7 files: Halley_MetUM_1p5km_3-hourly_tas.nc - 1.5 m 3-hourly instantaneous air temperature. Halley_MetUM_1p5km_3-hourly_xwind.nc - 10 m 3-hourly instantaneous wind component along the rotated latitude-longitude grid X-axis. Halley_MetUM_1p5km_3-hourly_ywind.nc - 10 m 3-hourly instantaneous wind component along the rotated latitude-longitude grid Y-axis. Halley_MetUM_1p5km_3-hourly_uas.nc - 10 m 3-hourly instantaneous eastward wind component. Halley_MetUM_1p5km_3-hourly_vas.nc - 10 m 3-hourly instantaneous northward wind component. Halley_MetUM_1p5km_lsm.nc - time-invariant MetUM land/sea binary mask (value 1 represents land, 0 represents sea). Halley_MetUM_1p5km_orog.nc - time-invariant MetUM surface altitude. The total size of this dataset is 1,581 MB. |