PUBLICATIONS

Publications AWACA

Août 2025

Dans le cadre de son projet de recherche à l’ENSTA, Maxime Coste a évalué la représentativité d’un « golden évènement » AWACA sélectionné en février 2025 à partir de 15 années de données MRR (Micro Rain Radar) à Dumont d'Urville, et a exploré, via des méthodes d’intelligence artificielle appliquées aux mesures de ceilomètre, comment compléter la zone aveugle du MRR en surface.

Juillet 2025

In December 2018, an atmospheric river event from the Atlantic reached Dome C, East Antarctica, causing a +18 °C warming, tripled water vapour, and a strong isotopic anomaly in water vapour (+ 17 ‰ for δ18O) at the surface. During the peak of the event, we found 70 % of the water vapour came from local snow sublimation, and 30 % from the atmospheric river itself, highlighting both large-scale advection and local interactions at the surface.

Juillet 2025

The erosion of surface snow by the wind is an important process for the Antarctic surface mass balance. This study presents the first development of a parameterisation of blowing snow for a global climate model. Simulations avec evaluated using measurements in Antarctica. Results show an overall decrease of the snow accumulation in the escarpment region of the ice sheet due to snow erosion and an increase at the coast due to blowing snow deposition and increase in precipitation.

Juin 2025

Katabatic winds are a key feature of the climate of Antarctica, but substantial biases remain in their representation in atmospheric models. This study investigates a katabatic wind event in the ICOLMDZ model using in-situ observations. The framework allows to disentangle which part of the bias is due to horizontal resolution, to parameter calibration and to structural deficiencies in the model. We underline in particular the need to refine the physics of the model snow cover.

Avril 2025

We present a novel 2.5-month record of the atmospheric water vapour isotopic composition during the austral summer 2023–2024 at Concordia Station on the Antarctic Plateau. We show that two independent laser spectrometers accurately record the diurnal variability of the atmospheric water vapour 𝛿18O, 𝛿D, and d-excess. We compare the measurements against outputs of the isotope-enabled general circulation model LMDZ6-iso to show how the data can be used to evaluate such models.

Mars 2025

Water vapour isotopes are important tools to better understand processes governing the atmospheric hydrological cycle. In polar regions, their measurement helps to improve the interpretation of water isotopic records in ice cores. However, in situ water vapour isotopic monitoring is an important challenge, especially in dry places of East Antarctica. We present here an alternative laser spectroscopy technique adapted for such measurements, with a limit of detection down to 10 ppm humidity.

Février 2025

The transport of water isotopes by the atmosphere plays a key role in interpreting Antarctic climate archives. This study evaluates the LMDZ6iso atmospheric model using snow, precipitation and vapour isotope measurements from both coastal and inland East Antarctica. The model is assessed at spatial, seasonal and diurnal scales, and the contribution of individual processes to boundary layer vapour isotopes is analysed. Results highlight the importance of isotopic exchanges during sublimation and condensation at low temperature, and suggest that including these processes would improve the representation of water isotopes in climate models.

figure CALIPSO
Juillet 2024

Dans le cadre de son stage de M2, Justine Charrel a évalué la couverture nuageuse au-dessus de l’Antarctique dans la dernière version du modèle climatique LMDZ6A à partir des observations du satellite CALIPSO.

Mai 2024

Coastal surface winds in Antarctica are amongst the strongest winds on Earth. They are either driven by the cooling of the surface air mass by the ice sheet (katabatic) or by large-scale pressure systems. Here we compute the relative contribution of these drivers. We find that seasonal variations in the wind speed come from the katabatic acceleration, but, at a 3-hourly timescale, none of the large-scale or katabatic accelerations can be considered as the main driver.

Publications associées à AWACA

  • Landais, A., Agosta, C., Vimeux, F., Magand, O., Solis, C., Cauquoin, A., Dutrievoz, N., Risi, C., Leroy-Dos Santos, C., FourrĂ©, E., Cattani, O., Jossoud, O., Minster, B., PriĂ©, F., Casado, M., Dommergue, A., Bertrand, Y., and Werner, M.: Abrupt excursions in water vapor isotopic variability at the Pointe Benedicte observatory on Amsterdam Island, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 4611–4634, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-4611-2024, 2024.