Parameterizing turbulent exchange over sea ice: the ice station weddell results

A 4-month deployment on Ice Station Weddell (ISW) in the western Weddell Sea yielded over 2000 h of nearly continuous surface-level meteorological data, including eddy-covariance measurements of the turbulent surface fluxes of momentum, and sensible and latent heat. Those data lead to a new parameterization for the roughness length for wind speed, z0, for snow-covered sea ice that combines three regimes: an aerodynamically smooth regime, a high-wind saltation regime, and an intermediate regime between these two extremes where the macroscale or `permanent' roughness of the snow and ice determines z0. Roughness lengths for temperature, zT, computed from this data set corroborate the theoretical model that Andreas published in 1987. Roughness lengths for humidity,zQ, do not support this model as conclusively but are all, on average, within an order of magnitude of its predictions. Only rarely arezTand zQ equal to z0. These parameterizations have implications for models that treat the atmosphere-ice-ocean system.