The Snow Model Intercomparison Project SnowMIP

1
The Snow Model Intercomparison Project (SnowMIP)
Richard Essery School of GeoSciences University
of Edinburgh, UK
Arctic System Model Workshop III, Montréal, 16
17 July 2009
2
Nuria Altimir, Kostas Andreadis, Ian Baker, Alan
Barr, Paul Bartlett,Eric Bazile, Aaron Boone,
Ross Brown, Yong-Jiu Dai, Huiping Deng,Hervé
Douville, Emanuel Dutra, Kelly Elder, Chad Ellis,
Pierre Etchevers,Xia Feng, Alberto Fernandez,
Charles Fierz, Alexander Gelfan,Angus Goodbody,
Yeugeniy Gusev, David Gustafsson, Rob
Hellström,Yukiko Hirabayashi, Tomoyoshi Hirota,
Tobias Jonas, Rachel Jordan,Victor Koren, Eva
Kowalczyk, Anna Kuragina, Yves Lejeune,Dennis
Lettenmaier, Wei-Ping Li, Charlie Luce, Eric
Martin, Olga Nasonova,John Pomeroy, Jukka
Pumpanen, David Pyles, Nick Rutter,Patrick
Samuelsson, Melody Sandells, Gerd Schädler, Adam
Schlosser,Andrey Shmakin, Tatiana Smirnova,
Manfred Stähli, Reto Stöckli,Ulrich Strasser,
Hua Su, Kazuyoshi Suzuki, Kumiko Takata, Kenji
Tanaka,Erin Thompson, Timo Vesala, Pedro
Viterbo, Andrew Wiltshire, Kun Xia,Yongkang Xue,
Takeshi Yamazaki, Zong-Liang Yang
Arctic System Model Workshop III, Montréal, 16
17 July 2009
3
SnowMIP Sites
? SnowMIP1 Col de Porte (45.3ºN, 5.8ºE) Goose
Bay (53.3ºN, 60.4ºW) Sleepers River (44.5ºN,
72.2ºW) Weissfluhjoch (46.8ºN, 9.8ºE) 24 models
? SnowMIP2 Alptal (47.3ºN, 8.7ºE) BERMS (53.6ºN,
104.4ºW) Fraser (39.5ºN, 105.5ºW) Hitsujigaoka (
42.6ºN, 141.2ºE) Hyytiälä (61.5ºN, 24.2ºE) 33
models
4
SnowMIP1 SWE Simulations
5
Forests and Snow
Forests (University of Maryland global land cover
classification) and January 2005 snow cover
(NSIDC) overlap in red Large discrepancies
remain in albedo for forested areas under snowy
conditions due to difficulties in determining the
extent of masking of snow by vegetation IPCC AR4
6
SnowMIP2 Sites
BERMS, Saskatchewan, Canada
Alptal, Switzerland
Hyytiälä, Finland
Fraser, Colorado, USA
Hitsujigaoka , Japan
7
Open and Forest SWE Simulations
8
Open and Forest SWE Simulations
9
Open and Forest SWE Simulations
10
Open and Forest Albedo Simulations
11
Open and Forest Albedo Simulations
12
Open and Forest Surface Temperature Simulations
13
Open and Forest Surface Temperature Simulations
14
Open and Forest Soil Temperature Simulations
15
Open and Forest Soil Temperature Simulations
16
Limitations

• Not Arctic!
• Point scales
• Uncoupled
• Uncertainty in driving and evaluation data
• Subjective parameter choices
• There is no best model
• Essery, RLH, and 8 others, 2009. SnowMIP2 An
  evaluation of forest snow
• process simulations. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc.,
  doi 10.1175/2009BAMS2629.1
• Rutter, N, and 50 others, 2009 Evaluation of
  forest snow processes models
• (SnowMIP2). J. Geophys. Res.Atmos.,
  doi10.1029/2008JD011063.