Atmospheric rivers are responsible for extreme conditions across the world, driving flooding and extreme rainfall.

But they have an especially important role in the polar regions, where they can contribute to ice melt, sea ice breakup and ice shelf collapse.

In this video, I’m talking to atmospheric river expert Dr Jonathan Wille, a researcher at ETH Zürich. You can check his work out here: https://jonathanwille.github.io/

He’s written some great papers on Antarctic atmospheric rivers, including several which are linked below in the description, and on his website.

Thanks again Jonathan!

##################################################

Contents
00:00 – Intro
00:48 – What’s an atmospheric river?
01:38 – Impacts of atmospheric rivers
02:28 – ARs at the poles
03:27 – March 2022
05:57 – The future is wet
06:40 – Some thermodynamics, soz
08:18 – Summary

#ClimateChange #Antarctica #Extremes

##################################################

Thanks to my Patreon subscribers, including my Patreon Saints:

Steven Cowling, Eliot Bryant, Baerbel Winkler, Patrick Hillberg, Michael Unterweger, James Harley Gorrell & Lucien Mansell.

Join them here:   / dr_gilbz  

##################################################

Notes on back-of-the-envelope calculations

** Assumptions **

1) Energy required to convert ice at 0'C to liquid water at 0'C = 334 J / g
2) Density of fresh snow 450 kg m-3
3) Mean melt flux (~ 2 W m-2) sustained consistently throughout event and across area.
4) Surface temperature at melting point throughout

2 W m-2 = 2 J s * m-2

Energy required to melt 1 kg of snow with density 450 kg m-3:
334000 J kg-1 * 450 kg m-3 = 150,300,000 J m-3

150,300,000 J m-3 / 2 J s * m-2 = 75,150,000 s to melt 1 m surface snow

75,150,000 s / 3,600 s hr-1 = 20,875 hours to melt 1 m surface snow

= 2.38 years

Equivalent at 200 W /m2 = 8.7 days to melt a whole m of surface snow

##################################################

References

Some of Jonathan’s excellent research:

Wille et al. (2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/s4156...

Wille et al. (2021) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...

Wille et al. (2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s4324...

Wille et al. (2024a) https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0175.1

Wille et al. (2024b) https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0176.1

Other scientific literature:

Lavers & Villarini (2015) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

Paltan et al. (2017) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...

Shields et al. (2022) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...

Wang et al. (2023) https://www.nature.com/articles/s4146...

Li et al. (2024) https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/18...

General interest links:

https://www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/extr...

https://www.arctictoday.com/record-sm...

https://www.noaa.gov/stories/what-are...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/en...

https://theconversation.com/a-heatwav...

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/c...

https://news.sky.com/story/england-so...

https://www.ft.com/content/f976b2fb-9...

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/us...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/us...