Understanding wind-driven melt of patchy snow cover
The representation of snow processes in most large-scale hydrological and climate models is known to introduce considerable uncertainty into the predictions and projections of water availability. During the critical snowmelt period, the main challenge in snow modeling is that net radiation is spatia...
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:f366d2253c4d43399db2793ea5060a63 2023-05-15T18:32:29+02:00 Understanding wind-driven melt of patchy snow cover L. D. van der Valk A. J. Teuling L. Girod N. Pirk R. Stoffer C. C. van Heerwaarden 2022-10-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-4319-2022 https://doaj.org/article/f366d2253c4d43399db2793ea5060a63 EN eng Copernicus Publications https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/4319/2022/tc-16-4319-2022.pdf https://doaj.org/toc/1994-0416 https://doaj.org/toc/1994-0424 doi:10.5194/tc-16-4319-2022 1994-0416 1994-0424 https://doaj.org/article/f366d2253c4d43399db2793ea5060a63 The Cryosphere, Vol 16, Pp 4319-4341 (2022) Environmental sciences GE1-350 Geology QE1-996.5 article 2022 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-4319-2022 2022-12-30T19:49:37Z The representation of snow processes in most large-scale hydrological and climate models is known to introduce considerable uncertainty into the predictions and projections of water availability. During the critical snowmelt period, the main challenge in snow modeling is that net radiation is spatially highly variable for a patchy snow cover, resulting in large horizontal differences in temperatures and heat fluxes. When a wind blows over such a system, these differences can drive advection of sensible and latent heat from the snow-free areas to the snow patches, potentially enhancing the melt rates at the leading edge and increasing the variability of subgrid melt rates. To get more insight into these processes, we examine the melt along the upwind and downwind edges of a 50 m long snow patch in the Finseelvi catchment, Norway, and try to explain the observed behavior with idealized simulations of heat fluxes and air movement over patchy snow. The melt of the snow patch was monitored from 11 June until 15 June 2019 by making use of height maps obtained through the photogrammetric structure-from-motion principle. A vertical melt of 23 ± 2.0 cm was observed at the upwind edge over the course of the field campaign, whereas the downwind edge melted only 3 ± 0.4 cm. When comparing this with meteorological measurements, we estimate the turbulent heat fluxes to be responsible for 60 % to 80 % of the upwind melt, of which a significant part is caused by the latent heat flux. The melt at the downwind edge approximately matches the melt occurring due to net radiation. To better understand the dominant processes, we represented this behavior in idealized direct numerical simulations, which are based on the measurements on a single snow patch by Harder et al. ( 2017 ) and resemble a flat, patchy snow cover with typical snow patch sizes of 15, 30, and 60 m. Using these simulations, we found that the reduction of the vertical temperature gradient over the snow patch was the main cause of the reductions in vertical sensible ... Article in Journal/Newspaper The Cryosphere Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Norway The Cryosphere 16 10 4319 4341 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
Environmental sciences GE1-350 Geology QE1-996.5 |
spellingShingle |
Environmental sciences GE1-350 Geology QE1-996.5 L. D. van der Valk A. J. Teuling L. Girod N. Pirk R. Stoffer C. C. van Heerwaarden Understanding wind-driven melt of patchy snow cover |
topic_facet |
Environmental sciences GE1-350 Geology QE1-996.5 |
description |
The representation of snow processes in most large-scale hydrological and climate models is known to introduce considerable uncertainty into the predictions and projections of water availability. During the critical snowmelt period, the main challenge in snow modeling is that net radiation is spatially highly variable for a patchy snow cover, resulting in large horizontal differences in temperatures and heat fluxes. When a wind blows over such a system, these differences can drive advection of sensible and latent heat from the snow-free areas to the snow patches, potentially enhancing the melt rates at the leading edge and increasing the variability of subgrid melt rates. To get more insight into these processes, we examine the melt along the upwind and downwind edges of a 50 m long snow patch in the Finseelvi catchment, Norway, and try to explain the observed behavior with idealized simulations of heat fluxes and air movement over patchy snow. The melt of the snow patch was monitored from 11 June until 15 June 2019 by making use of height maps obtained through the photogrammetric structure-from-motion principle. A vertical melt of 23 ± 2.0 cm was observed at the upwind edge over the course of the field campaign, whereas the downwind edge melted only 3 ± 0.4 cm. When comparing this with meteorological measurements, we estimate the turbulent heat fluxes to be responsible for 60 % to 80 % of the upwind melt, of which a significant part is caused by the latent heat flux. The melt at the downwind edge approximately matches the melt occurring due to net radiation. To better understand the dominant processes, we represented this behavior in idealized direct numerical simulations, which are based on the measurements on a single snow patch by Harder et al. ( 2017 ) and resemble a flat, patchy snow cover with typical snow patch sizes of 15, 30, and 60 m. Using these simulations, we found that the reduction of the vertical temperature gradient over the snow patch was the main cause of the reductions in vertical sensible ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
L. D. van der Valk A. J. Teuling L. Girod N. Pirk R. Stoffer C. C. van Heerwaarden |
author_facet |
L. D. van der Valk A. J. Teuling L. Girod N. Pirk R. Stoffer C. C. van Heerwaarden |
author_sort |
L. D. van der Valk |
title |
Understanding wind-driven melt of patchy snow cover |
title_short |
Understanding wind-driven melt of patchy snow cover |
title_full |
Understanding wind-driven melt of patchy snow cover |
title_fullStr |
Understanding wind-driven melt of patchy snow cover |
title_full_unstemmed |
Understanding wind-driven melt of patchy snow cover |
title_sort |
understanding wind-driven melt of patchy snow cover |
publisher |
Copernicus Publications |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-4319-2022 https://doaj.org/article/f366d2253c4d43399db2793ea5060a63 |
geographic |
Norway |
geographic_facet |
Norway |
genre |
The Cryosphere |
genre_facet |
The Cryosphere |
op_source |
The Cryosphere, Vol 16, Pp 4319-4341 (2022) |
op_relation |
https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/4319/2022/tc-16-4319-2022.pdf https://doaj.org/toc/1994-0416 https://doaj.org/toc/1994-0424 doi:10.5194/tc-16-4319-2022 1994-0416 1994-0424 https://doaj.org/article/f366d2253c4d43399db2793ea5060a63 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-4319-2022 |
container_title |
The Cryosphere |
container_volume |
16 |
container_issue |
10 |
container_start_page |
4319 |
op_container_end_page |
4341 |
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