Exploring the sensitivity to precipitation, blowing snow, and horizontal resolution of the spatial distribution of simulated snow cover

Full article: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-2604/egusphere-2023-2604.pdf

Led by Ange Haddjeri

Abstract

Accurate snow cover modeling is a high stake for mountain regions. Alpine snow evolution and spatial variability result from a multitude of complex processes including interactions between wind and snow. The SnowPappus blowing snow model was designed to add blowing snow modeling capabilities to the SURFEX/Crocus simulation system for applications across large spatial and temporal extents. This paper presents the very first spatialized evaluation of this simulation system over a 902 km2 domain in the French Alps. Here we compare snow cover simulations to the spatial distribution of snow height obtained from Pleiades satellites stereo-imagery and to Snow Melt-Out Dates from Sentinel-2 time series over three snow sea- sons. We analyzed the sensitivity of the simulations to three different precipitation datasets and two horizontal resolutions. The evaluations are presented as a function of elevation and landform types. The results show that the SnowPappus model forced with high-resolution wind fields enhances the snow cover spatial variability at high elevations allowing a better agreement with observations above 2500 m and near peaks and ridges. Model improvements are not obvious at low to medium altitudes where precipitation errors are the prevailing uncertainty. Our study illustrates the necessity to consider error contributions from blowing snow, precipitation forcings, and unresolved subgrid variability for robust evaluations of spatialized snow simulations. Despite the significant effect of the unresolved spatial scales of snow transport, 250 m horizontal resolution snow simulations using SnowPappus are found to be a promising avenue for large-scale modeling of alpine snowpacks.