Abstract
Abstract. Detailed hydrometeorological data from the rain-to-snow transition zone in mountain regions are limited. As the climate warms, the transition from rain to snow is moving to higher elevations, and these changes are altering the timing of downslope water delivery. To understand how these changes impact hydrological and biological processes in this climatologically sensitive region, detailed observations from the rain-to-snow transition zone are required. We present a complete hydrometeorological dataset for water years 2004 through 2014 for a watershed that spans the rain-to-snow transition zone (https://doi.org/10.15482/usda.adc/1402076). The Johnston Draw watershed (1.8 km2), ranging from 1497 to 1869 m in elevation, is a sub-watershed of the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed (RCEW) in southwestern Idaho, USA. The dataset includes continuous hourly hydrometeorological variables across a 372 m elevation gradient, on north- and south-facing slopes, including air temperature, relative humidity, and snow depth from 11 sites in the watershed. Hourly measurements of incoming shortwave radiation, precipitation, wind speed and direction, soil moisture, and soil temperature are available at selected stations. The dataset includes hourly stream discharge measured at the watershed outlet. These data provide the scientific community with a unique dataset useful for forcing and validating hydrological models and will allow for better representation and understanding of the complex processes that occur in the rain-to-snow transition zone.
Highlights
As the climate warms and many mountain regions shift from snow domination to a mix of rain and snow, we need to understand how these changes will alter hydrologic response (Stewart, 2009)
Serially complete, hourly hydrometeorological dataset from the rain-tosnow transition zone to improve understanding of these complex regions
We present a comprehensive hydrometeorological dataset for 11 water years (WY, 1 October through 30 September) from WY2004 to WY2014 for the Johnston Draw (JD) watershed that spans the rain-to-snow transition zone in southwestern Idaho
Summary
As the climate warms and many mountain regions shift from snow domination to a mix of rain and snow, we need to understand how these changes will alter hydrologic response (Stewart, 2009). In the northwestern US, the elevation of the rain-to-snow transition zone currently ranges from approximately 1500 to 1800 m (Nayak et al, 2010), covering ∼ 1 % of total land area in the region (Nolin and Daly, 2006) This broad characterization is not stationary in space or time, and its extent varies with climate conditions, latitude, and distance from the ocean. Mountain rainto-snow transition zones are important to study because they are sensitive to changes in climate (Klos et al, 2014) Because these areas frequently experience winter temperatures near 0 ◦C (Mote, 2003; Kormos et al, 2014), small changes in weather conditions can alter seasonal snow cover, the timing of melt, the delivery of liquid water to soil and streams, and, the ecosystems they sustain. Our objective is to provide this high spatiotemporal resolution dataset to study short-term variations at intra-event, intra-annual, and interannual scales, and we plan to continue these observations to assess long-term climatic trends at the sensitive rain-to-snow transition zone
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