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Arctic Snowpack Moisture Loss under a Warming Climate: Quantifying Sublimation and Evapotranspiration Dynamics (SNOWED)
Call year: 2026
Status: active
IADC_id: 818
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Project description:
The state of knowledge for winter sublimation is even more limited. There are few actual measurements, and most studies have used physical models to estimate this quantity. Moreover, fundamental questions concerning the boundary-layer physics of arctic winter sublimation remain unanswered. Resolving these is essential to closing local, regional, and pan-Arctic moisture budgets because some studies indicate sublimation may be as much as 50% of the total winter precipitation and 35% of the annual precipitation. The SNOWED project addresses this gap by quantifying sublimation and storage processes within the Arctic hydrological cycle under climate change. SNOWED will investigate sublimation and evapotranspiration dynamics in the Arctic snowpack and upland tundra. Using advanced eddy covariance measurements, the project aims to improve understanding of moisture fluxes affecting ice sheet mass balance under climate change. The data collected will enhance climate models and support long-term Arctic environmental monitoring Specific objectives: 1. To accurately quantify the surface moisture budget in the Arctic by measuring both precipitation and sublimation using the eddy covariance (EC) method. 2. To determine the current rate of snowpack sublimation and assess its temporal trend (i.e., whether it is increasing, decreasing, or stable). 3. To investigate how sublimation dynamics are affected by extreme thermal events, particularly during heat waves and warm spells. 4. To evaluate the contribution of sublimation to the seasonal hydrological balance under both typical and anomalously warm Arctic conditions. This base Dirigibile Italia access request is subject to the approval of the SNOWED proposal project, which was submitted to the SIOS RI (Research Infrastructures) Access Programme.
National/International Cooperation:
The project will involve experts in the field of atmosphere, terrestrial and cryosphere from the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC-CNR), the Institute of Bioeconomy (IBE-CNR) and the Institute of Polar Sciences (ISP-CNR). The expertise, resources, and visibility of this interdisciplinary team will ensure the successful completion of the project and will promote a comprehensive and collaborative approach to studying atmospheric and cryospheric dynamics in Arctic environments. The SNOWED will be linked to the activities of Atmosphere Flagship and Terrestrial Flagship at Svalbard to collect long period, high-resolution, multidisciplinary data on atmosphere-surface interaction
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