Investigating Arctic Clouds and Water Vapor over Sea Ice: Airborne Passive Microwave Observations during HALO-(AC)3

Clouds and water vapor play a critical role in the water and energy balance of the Arctic. However, few field observations of these quantities over sea ice exist. Passive microwave observations provide high sensitivity to clouds and water vapor with high spatial and temporal coverage in polar regions. However, retrievals of atmospheric quantities from satellites and aircraft require a description of the variable sea ice emissivity, which depends on the properties of sea ice and snow. Recently, improved retrieval methods that derive sea ice and atmospheric properties simultaneously allowed for improved exploitation of the information from passive microwave observations.

This work presents liquid water path (LWP), ice water path (IWP), and integrated water vapor (IWV) retrieved from the HALO Microwave Package (HAMP) operated onboard the HALO aircraft during the HALO-(AC)³ field campaign in spring 2022 in the Fram Strait. The nadir-viewing HAMP measures along two water vapor bands (22.24 and 183.31 GHz), two oxygen bands (50-60 and 118.75 GHz), and the atmospheric windows at 31 and 90 GHz over different surface types. The retrieval accounts for variable surface emission through a joint surface-atmosphere optimal estimation scheme with the Passive and Active Microwave Radiative Transfer (PAMTRA) model.

The high spatial coverage of the HALO flights allows for assessing the spatial and temporal variability of the retrieved IWV, LWP, and IWP under various atmospheric and surface conditions. A particular focus lies on the warm air intrusion events and their related poleward changes in cloud properties and water vapor over sea ice that HALO captured. Furthermore, the hectometer-scale airborne observations allow statistical comparison with operational satellite products, reanalysis, and model simulations along the flight track. The HAMP observations will improve the characterization of clouds and water vapor in the Arctic and potentially improve the use of passive microwave satellite observations over sea ice.