| 01 Apr 2026
Sea Salt Aerosols from Blowing Snow: Contributions to Radiative Forcing
Abstract. The Arctic and Antarctic regions experience significant climate impacts from aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions, yet the role of sea salt aerosols (SSA) emitted through blowing snow remains poorly quantified. This study implements a parameterization of the SSA production of blowing snow in both the TM5 global chemical transport model and the EC-Earth3 global climate model, for AMIP-type as well as transient (SSP3-7.0 for 2015–2051) experiments, assessing the contributions of the blowing snow process to aerosol mass, number, cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and radiative forcing in both polar regions. Model results are evaluated against observations from the MOSAiC campaign and coastal stations (Villum, Zeppelin, Alert). EC-Earth3 Simulations show that blowing snow substantially increases SSA concentrations during polar winter and spring, especially in the Antarctic where enhancements can exceed 100 % increase in particle numbers, leading to improved agreement with surface and in situ observations. Regionally, TM5 reveals an increase in accumulation mode aerosol and CCN. The resulting surface radiative forcing is globally negative due to increased scattering of shortwave radiation, while enhanced CCN increases longwave cloud effects in the polar lower troposphere. Overall, this work demonstrates that including blowing snow SSA emissions is essential for realistically representing polar aerosol burdens, seasonal cycles, and climate feedbacks in global models.
This manuscript presents blowing snow’s contribution to aerosol, cloud condensation nuclei, and radiative forcing in polar regions based on a modelling study. The paper addresses an important gap in polar aerosol-climate feedback. However, the contribution to the scientific community is limited by the lack of comparison with existing studies and a failure to discuss the broader implications of the findings. I suggest a major revision before publishing on ACP.
Major Comments
Specific Comments
Line 38: When mentioning specific CMIP6 models, please provide appropriate citations for the models discussed.
Line 53: Please clarify if the “2019-2020” period applies to both study locations or if there was a time distinction between the Arctic and Antarctic datasets.
Line 131: The correlation improvement here is relatively low. Please elaborate on the physical or numerical reasons behind this discrepancy, or can we only show the correlation during the blowing snow events?
Line 143 & Figure 4: The description and the figure show a different conclusion: as the figure shows, TM5 exhibits a slight decrease in Aitken mode particles when considering blowing snow instead of increasing. The following statement of results also indicates a decrease.
Figure 1:
The unit in the legend should use proper superscripts.
Add the specific locations of the three in-situ observation sites and the corresponding TM5 grid cells in Fig.1 Panel (a).
Standardize panel labels description as (a), (b), (c).
The colorbar is currently too large.
Figures 2 & 3: The readability is low.
Please specify the time resolution of the data.
Suggestion: Use a dual x-axis, moving the “added particle” data to the top x-axis to reduce overlap.
Figure 7: It should be “0.3% SS” instead of “0.3 supersaturation”. Additionally, the colorbar scale should be adjusted to clearly highlight the differences in CCN enhancement capabilities between the North and South Poles.