Understanding past and future changes in northern Fennoscandian snow cover.

• Main Author: Vignols, Rebecca Marianne
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Newnham College 2020
• Subjects: snow; climate change; arctic; snow cover; remote sensing; climate modelling; regional climate modelling; polar; northern fennoscandia; MODIS; Khibiny; Khibiny Mountains; Murmansk Oblast; WRF; Weather Research and Forecasting model; ground truthing; sensitivity study; model validation; ERA-Interim; field work; British Antarctic Survey; Scott Polar Research Institute; Kola Peninsula; Antarctic; Arctic; Murmansk; Antarc*; Climate change; Fennoscandia; Fennoscandian; kola peninsula
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.49927; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/302853

In this project, a combination of field measurements, remote sensing data and regional climate model outputs were used to study recent and projected future changes in Northern Fennoscandian snow cover. The research questions considered in this thesis are: What are the uncertainties in remote sensing and climate modelling datasets used in snow studies? How has snow cover been changing since the 1960s and how will it change over the next century, at a regional level over Northern Fennoscandia? Field measurements were made over two field seasons in the Khibiny Mountains in Arctic Russia. This ground data was used to gain an understanding of snow cover behaviour in the Western Mountain Regions (WMR) of the Kola Peninsula and to ground-truth 500 m resolution satellite data (MODIS: Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) snow products. The overall root mean square error (RMSE) for both MODIS instruments was found to be less than 10 %. The ground-truthed MODIS snow product was then used with station data to analyse past changes in snow cover in the WMR over the past 16 years. Though there is high inter-annual and spatial variability in the long-term snow cover trends in the WMR, overall, the duration of the snow cover season has increased at lower elevations and decreased at higher elevations. Field measurements and MODIS data were used in the sensitivity analysis of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model. Twelve experiments with different physics parameterisations were run over the first field season, and a statistical scores evaluation was undertaken to determine the optimised parameter setup for modelling snow in the region. Three CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5) models were used to force WRF in historical (1990 - 1999) and two future climate (2090 - 2099) emission scenarios over Northern Fennoscandia. Outputs from the historical runs were compared to data from 10 stations across Northern Fennoscandia in order to further validate WRF. WRF makes excellent temperature ...