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A Review of the Factors Influencing Arctic Mixed-Phase Clouds: Progress and Outlook
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  • Ivy Tan,
  • Georgia Sotiropoulou,
  • Patrick C Taylor,
  • Lauren Zamora,
  • Manfred Wendisch
Ivy Tan
McGill University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Georgia Sotiropoulou
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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Patrick C Taylor
Baltimore County
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Lauren Zamora
University of Maryland
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Manfred Wendisch
Stockholm University Bolin Center for Climate Research
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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.