INFLUENCE IF ATMOSPHERIC MOISTURE TRANSPORT ON ICE COVERAGE IN POLAR REGIONS

Abstract

Change in Earth's polar ice sheets is potentially a major source of sea level variability, dramatically affecting global water cycle. One important component in the polar region water balance is the atmospheric moisture transported from lower latitude, which is traditionally estimated from rawinsonde measurements. A method has been developed to estimate moisture transport integrated over the depth of the atmosphere (IMT) by combining the observations by spacebased scatterometers and microwave radiometers. The gridded IMT fields over global oceans have been produced for the period from August 1999 to December 2003, using data from QuikSCAT and the Special Sensor Microwave / Imager (SSM/I). The temporal and geographical variation of IMT into Greenland and Antarctic were characterized and related to sea ice distribution