NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THE EVOLUTION OF SNOW COVERAND ITS SENSITIVITY EXPERIMENTS

KeyWord:Snow cover;Evolution;Simulation;Comprehensive Land Surface Model;Sensitivity experiments

Abstract:

      By using Comprehensive Land Surface Model (CLSM), three snow cases, i.e., France Colde Porte 1993/1994, 1994/1995 and BOREAS SSA-OJP 1994/1995, are simulated. The simulated results were compared with the observations to examine the capability of the model to describe the evolutions of snow cover under two different land cover conditions. Several sensitivity experiments were performed to investigate the effects of some snow cover internal processes paramet erizations and vegetation on the model results. Results suggest that CLSM simulates the basic processes of snow cover accurately and discribes the features of the snow cover evolutions reasonably, indicating that the model has the potential to model the processes related to snow cover evolution. It was also found that the different parameterization schemes of the snow fall density and snow water holding capacity have significant effects on the simulation of snow cover. The estimation of snowfall density mainly impacts the simulocted snow depth, and the underestimation (overestimation) of snow fall density increases (decreases) snow depth simulated significantly with little effect on the simulated snow water equivalent (SWE).