Dry snow initialization and densification over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in the ORCHIDEE land surface model
Abstract
Accurate modeling of the snowpack over ice sheets is essential for quantifying their surface mass balance contribution and their resulting impact on sea level rise. The snowpack evolution is largely governed by surface climate but also by internal processes such as densification. In land surface models, such processes are often represented using formulations developed for seasonal snow, limiting their realism in polar environments. To improve the representation of polar snow in the land surface model ORCHIDEE (Organizing Carbon and Hydrology in Dynamic Ecosystems), the surface component of the IPSL-CM climate model, we implement a series of developments over Greenland and Antarctica. These developments include (1) a new snowpack initialization procedure that generates deep and physically consistent density profiles based solely on latitude and elevation, which may be useful for other snowpack models, (2) a wind-based surface snow density parameterization applicable to both Greenland and Antarctica, and (3) a recalibrated dry-snow densification scheme for snowpack compaction, using observations and 1D and 2D offline simulations. These developments improve the simulation of surface snow density as well as the internal snowpack structure, including both density and temperature, with good agreement with dry-snow observations. Discrepancies still persist in representing the Greenland ablation zones, suggesting that further improvements in surface energy balance processes are needed, with specific attention to snow albedo.
Related
- Mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets from the 1970s to 2023
- ORCHIDEE-Hg v1.0 (rev. 9721): A new global land-surface model for mercury dynamics – Part 1: Model description and evaluation in temperate regions
- Benchmarking a new urban scheme in the ORCHIDEE 2.2 land surface model
- Assimilation of Atmospheric CO 2 Concentration in the ORCHIDEE Land Surface Model: Exploring the Added Value of Explicit Forest Regrowth Representation
- Subgrid parametrizations mediate the large‐scale effects of soil macroporosity on the water cycle in the ORCHIDEE land surface model
BibTeX
@article{conesa2026snow,
title = {{Dry snow initialization and densification over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in the ORCHIDEE land surface model}},
author = {Philippe Conesa and Cécile Agosta and Sylvie Charbit and Christophe Dumas and Simon Beylat and Nina Raoult},
journal = {The Cryosphere},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.5194/tc-20-4973-2026},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05736938v1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Dry snow initialization and densification over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in the ORCHIDEE land surface model
AU - Philippe Conesa
AU - Cécile Agosta
AU - Sylvie Charbit
AU - Christophe Dumas
AU - Simon Beylat
AU - Nina Raoult
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/03
JO - The Cryosphere
DO - 10.5194/tc-20-4973-2026
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05736938v1
AB - Accurate modeling of the snowpack over ice sheets is essential for quantifying their surface mass balance contribution and their resulting impact on sea level rise. The snowpack evolution is largely governed by surface climate but also by internal processes such as densification. In land surface models, such processes are often represented using formulations developed for seasonal snow, limiting their realism in polar environments. To improve the representation of polar snow in the land surface model ORCHIDEE (Organizing Carbon and Hydrology in Dynamic Ecosystems), the surface component of the IPSL-CM climate model, we implement a series of developments over Greenland and Antarctica. These developments include (1) a new snowpack initialization procedure that generates deep and physically consistent density profiles based solely on latitude and elevation, which may be useful for other snowpack models, (2) a wind-based surface snow density parameterization applicable to both Greenland and Antarctica, and (3) a recalibrated dry-snow densification scheme for snowpack compaction, using observations and 1D and 2D offline simulations. These developments improve the simulation of surface snow density as well as the internal snowpack structure, including both density and temperature, with good agreement with dry-snow observations. Discrepancies still persist in representing the Greenland ablation zones, suggesting that further improvements in surface energy balance processes are needed, with specific attention to snow albedo.
SN - 1994-0424
SN - 1994-0416
ER -