Bacterial activity in South Pole snow.

Bacterial activity in South pole snow is questionable.

Temperatures, heating rates and vapour pressures in near-surface snow at the South Pole

A finite-volume model is used to simulate 9 years (1995–2003) of snow temperatures at the South Pole. The upper boundary condition is skin-surface temperature derived from routine upwelling longwave radiation measurements, while the lower boundary condition is set to the seasonal temperature gradient at 6.5m depth, taken from prior measurements at the South Pole. We focus on statistics of tempe...

Arctic and Antarctic diurnal and seasonal variations of snow albedo from multiyear Baseline Surface Radiation Network measurements

[1] This study analyzes diurnal and seasonal variations of snow albedo at four Baseline Surface Radiation Network stations in the Arctic and Antarctica from 2003 to 2008 to elucidate similarities and differences in snow albedo diurnal cycles across geographic zones and to assess how diurnal changes in snow albedo affect the surface energy budget. At the seasonal scale, the daily albedo for the ...

The spectral and chemical measurement of pollutants on snow near South Pole, Antarctica

Remote sensing of light-absorbing particles (LAPs), or dark colored impurities, such as black carbon (BC) and dust on snow, is a key remaining challenge in cryospheric surface characterization and application to snow, ice, and climate models. We present a quantitative data set of in situ snow reflectance, measured and modeled albedo, and BC and trace element concentrations from clean to heavily...

Assessing the photochemical impact of snow NOx emissions over Antarctica during ANTCI 2003

Surface and aircraft measurements show large amounts of reactive nitrogen over the Antarctic plateau during the ANTCI 2003 experiment. We make use of 1-D and 3-D chemical transport model simulations to analyze these measurements and assess the photochemical impact of snow NOx emissions. Boundary layer heights measured by SODAR at the South Pole were simulated reasonably well by the polar versio...