Moisture transport into the Arctic in a past and future climate

The Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the globe. There are both remote and local mechanism identified driving this process. While albedo changes and atmospheric stability happens within in the Arctic, transfer transport processes, both in the ocean and atmosphere, heat and moisture into the Arctic. These processes can be analysed in a Eulerien way, by observing the fluxes through a curtain defining the Arctic or/and by Lagrangian analysis which follows this transport processes all the way from uptake in the mid/high latitudes until the inflow into the Arctic. 

We use a Lagrangian Particle Transport model FLEXPART running with ECMWF reanalysis data as well as with data from the norwegian earth system model NorESM, which represents the future climate scenarios until 2100. In this way we investigate the inflow of moisture and energy for the last 50 years, but can also project it in the future by considering the climate model output.

We find that the the transport through the 65N Latitude, defining the Arctic area is highly inhomogenious in space, but has also a distinct seasonal variability. The end of the storm tracks, especially the Northern Atlantic stormtrack show the most important region of inflow. While moisture origins over ocean areas in winter, continental areas in summer act as a source. The patterns in the reanalysis data from ECMWF and in the climate simulations are very similar. Those patterns are stable over time, but intensify in a warming climate.