Impact of distributed meteorological forcing on simulated snow cover and hydrological fluxes over a mid-elevation alpine micro-scale catchment

Abstract = =  0.06) and runoff. Shortwave radiation distribution has an important impact, reducing evapotranspiration as a function of the slope orientation (decreasing the slope between observed and simulated evapotranspiration from 1.55 to 1.18). For the primarily east-facing catchment studied here, distributing shortwave radiation helps generate realistic timing and spatial heterogeneity in the snowmelt at the expense of an increase in the mean bias error (from 0.06 to 0.22) for all distributed forcing simulations compared to the simulation with only distributed precipitation. Distributing wind speed in the energy balance calculation has a more complex impact on our catchment, as it accelerates snowmelt when meteorological conditions are favorable but does not generate snow patches at the end of our test case. This shows that slope- and aspect-based meteorological distribution can improve the spatio-temporal representation of snow cover and evapotranspiration in complex mountain terrain.

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Impact of distributed meteorological forcing on simulated snow cover and hydrological fluxes over a mid-elevation alpine micro-scale catchment ; volume:27 ; number:1 ; year:2023 ; pages:191-212 ; extent:22 ; Hydrology and earth system sciences ; 27, Heft 1 (2023), 191-212 (gesamt 22)

Contributors, Places and Time

• Creator: Gupta, Aniket ; Reverdy, Alix ; Cohard, Jean-Martial ; Hector, Basile ; Descloitres, Marc ; Vandervaere, Jean-Pierre ; Coulaud, Catherine ; Biron, Romain ; Liger, Lucie ; Maxwell, Reed ; Valay, Jean-Gabriel ; Voisin, Didier

Further information

• DOI: 10.5194/hess-27-191-2023
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2023011204210860853717
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:27 AM CEST