Impact of parameterizations in snow physics and interface processes on the simulation of snow cover and runoff at several cold region sites

Abstract

A series of numerical experiments have been designed to understand the physics at the soil‐vegetation‐snow‐atmosphere interface and to find the major parameterizations/parameters, which are crucial to simulate cold season processes. Observational data sets from Col de Porte of France, Ovre Lansjarv of Sweden, and Gander of Canada were used to help interpret the results. This study shows that snow layering and compaction are among the most important factors affecting proper simulations of snow depth, snow water equivalent (SWE), surface temperature, and surface runoff. Fixed snow density could produce as high as 100 percent error in estimating snow depth and could cause significant biases in SWE simulation during the melting period. Furthermore, with a bulk snow/soil layer, the simulated surface temperature would persistently be close to the freezing point with substantially hampered variability, and the variability and the amplitude of the runoff during the snow‐melting season could also be severely underestimated. The experiments also show that proper snow albedo is crucial during the ablation period and affects the magnitude and timing in both SWE and runoff simulations. Furthermore, this study indicates that the parameterizations in the surface aerodynamic resistance in the stable regime play an important role in determining the sensible and latent heat fluxes during the winter season in the Arctic region and then affect the snow depth simulations and prediction of snow melting as well as runoff timing. Although the snow may fully cover the ground in cold regions during the winter, numerical experiments in this study show the vegetation still exerts a substantial influence in the snow depth and runoff simulations. Numerical experimentation shows that less downward sensible heat on the bare ground produces thick snow cover and extremely high peak runoff, which leads to a typical deforestation scenario in cold regions.