A Review of the Factors Influencing Arctic Mixed-Phase Clouds: Progress
and Outlook
Abstract
Mixed-phase clouds are ubiquitous in the Arctic and play a critical role
in Earth’s energy budget at the surface and top of the atmosphere. These
clouds typically occupy the lower and midlevel troposphere and are
composed of purely supercooled liquid droplets or mixtures of
supercooled liquid water droplets and ice crystals. Here, we review
progress in our understanding of the factors that control the formation
and dissipation of Arctic mixed-phase clouds, including the
thermodynamic structure of the lower troposphere, warm and moist air
intrusions into the Arctic, large-scale subsidence and aerosol
particles. We then provide a brief survey of numerous Arctic field
campaigns that targeted local cloud-controlling factors and follow this
with specific examples of how the Arctic Cloud Observations Using
airborne measurements during polar Day (ACLOUD)/ Physical feedback of
Arctic PBL, Sea ice, Cloud And AerosoL (PASCAL) and Airborne
measurements of radiative and turbulent FLUXes of energy and momentum in
the Arctic boundary layer (AFLUX) field campaigns that took place in the
vicinity of Svalbard in 2019 were able to advance our understanding on
this topic to demonstrate the value of field campaigns. Finally, we
conclude with a discussion of the outlook of future research in the
study of Arctic cloud-controlling factors and provide several
recommendations for the observational and modelling community to advance
our understanding of the role of Arctic mixed-phase clouds in a rapidly
changing climate.