Evaluation of Antarctic snowfall in global meteorological reanalyses

Recent precipitation observations provided by CloudSat are used to evaluate the ability of various meteorological analyses and reanalyses to reproduce Antarctic snowfall. The performance of the ECMWF Interim Re-Analysis (ERA Interim), the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA55), the Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Application (MERRA), and the Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Application 2 (MERRA-2), as well as ECMWF operational analyses are compared over the 2007–2010 period. The mean snowfall rate over Antarctica north of 82 °S simulated by the reanalyses between 2007 and 2010 ranges from 165 to 225 mm per year, while CloudSat observations indicate a value of 172 mm per year. ERA Interim produces the closest match to the observed snowfall rate, but all the reanalyses reproduce well the seasonal and interannual variability of Antarctic snowfall reported in CloudSat observations.