University of Washington Snow on Antarctic Ice Lagrangian (WASSAIL) model data, v1.0.0 (2003-2025)

This archive contains gridded output fields from the University of Washington Snow on Antarctic Ice Lagrangian (WASSAIL) model, described in a manuscript submitted to The Cryosphere:

Campbell, E.C., Riser, S.C., Webster, M.A. (2026). Lagrangian reconstruction of snow accumulation and loss on Antarctic sea ice, EGUsphere [preprint]. doi:10.5194/egusphere-2026-2089

Each netCDF file contains daily fields spanning 2003-02-15 to 2025-02-14, provided on a 0.75° x 0.75° regular lat–lon grid (a coarsened version of the ERA5 grid). Latitudes and longitudes represent grid cell centers. The fields are generated from one-year Lagrangian parcel simulations beginning on 15 February of each year, forced using ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis and a variety of remote sensing sources.

The following parameters related to snow evolution and the snow mass budget are available:

• snow_depth: Net snow accumulation on sea ice
• snow_rho: Bulk snow density on sea ice
• si_depth: Superimposed ice thickness
• Q_new: New snowfall on sea ice
• Q_con_div: Snow depth change due to sea ice convergence and divergence
• Q_dens: Decrease in snow depth due to mechanical compaction
• Q_melt_non_rain: Non-rain-related snow melt
• Q_melt_rain: Rain-related snow melt
• Q_surf: Snow surface sublimation
• Q_sub: Blowing snow sublimation
• Q_ocean: Lead trapping of blowing snow
• snow_to_ocean: Snow and snow-ice released to ocean upon sea ice melt
• si_to_ocean: Superimposed ice released to ocean upon sea ice melt

The netCDF metadata contains units, notes regarding the sign of each parameter, and other specifications.

Ungridded model output for individual Lagrangian parcels can be provided by request. The parcel-level data are not archived here due to their large file size (approximately 7 GB per simulated year).

You can find the open-source model and analysis code on GitHub, including documentation in a README.md file: https://github.com/ethan-campbell/WASSAIL/. The code is also archived on Zenodo.

Please contact me at ethancc@uw.edu if you have any questions regarding this model output.