Clouds over the Antarctic Peninsula

There have been very few in-situ measurements of clouds over Antarctica and so very little is known about the size distribution and phase of these clouds. During the 2010/11 and 2011/12 season, in situ cloud microphysical measurements were conducted by the British Antarctic Survey using an instrumented aircraft fitted with a DMT Cloud Aerosol Precipitation Spectrometer (CAPS). Although observations were made during the Austral Summer they provide a useful source of measurements to validate climate models and provide the first climatology of clouds over the Antarctic Peninsula.

Here we present results that suggest that the clouds forming on each side of the Peninsula are similar in particle numbers and cloud liquid water which suggests a common cloud condensation nuclei source. However, we find that numerical forecast models do not represent these clouds well with potential consequences for radiative budgets in this region.