The Surprising Insensitivity of Cloud Liquid Water Path to Meteorology in Arctic Winter

Kara Hartig

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at CU Boulder

Tuesday, May 19, 2026, 2:15 pm MT
DSRC Room 1D403

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Abstract

The presence or absence of liquid-containing clouds in the Arctic is tightly coupled to the surface energy budget in the cold months, helping to set surface temperatures and sea ice extent. However, the meteorological conditions that give rise to these clouds and their remarkable persistence across the Arctic are not well constrained, leading to model biases. Using over a decade of observations from the North Slope of Alaska, this talk investigates the relationship between local meteorology, large-scale circulation, and cloud liquid and ice water path. We find that temperature, moisture, wind direction, and large-scale circulation regime are surprisingly poor predictors of liquid water path. Meteorological regimes with significant differences in temperature, moisture, and cloud fraction do not produce appreciable differences in cloud liquid water path. Ice water path, on the other hand, is correlated with bulk atmospheric moisture and particularly with anomalously moist conditions and may be responsible for the muted response of liquid water path to high atmospheric moisture.

Bio: Kara Hartig is a postdoc through the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) Visiting Fellows program and currently housed at SEEC on the University of Colorado Boulder's East Campus. She got her PhD in Physics from Harvard University in 2024 and her bachelor's in Physics from Brown University in 2018. Her research covers extremely cold weather and extremely cold regions, with a current focus on Arctic clouds.