W. M. Connolley
British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council,
High Cross, Cambridge, CB3 OET, UK.
Email: wmc@bas.ac.uk
In the interior of the Antarctic ice sheet the surface temperature inversion averages over 25 oC in the winter months. The negative buoyancy of the near-surface air drives the katabatic windflow which has important consequences for the climate of Antarctica. In this paper I combine radiosonde measurements of the inversion with recent GCM results. I attempt to assess the accuracy of proposed connections between the surface temperature and the inversion strength by comparing the limited observational verification data with the much wider coverage that a climate model allows. This indicates that, using multi-annual data, the continent-wide RMS error of deducing the inversion strength from a regression technique is approximately 2.9 oC whereas using a method based upon differences between summer and winter temperatures has a RMS error of approximately 2.5 oC.
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