A Nested-Grid Snow Modeling System

Speaker: 
Dr. Glen E. Liston
Affiliation: 
Colorado State University
Seminar Date: 
14. November 2018 - 11:00 - 12:45
Location: 
Lecture room, Ground Floor, NERSC

Over the last 35 years, Dr. Liston has developed a snow-evolution modeling system (MicroMet, SnowModel, and SnowAssim) that can be used for a wide range of snow and other cold-season, cold-region applications. The model formulation is general enough to allow simulations over temporal domains spanning days to decades, and spatial domains spanning from local measurement sites to pan-Arctic regions at spatial resolutions ranging from 1-m to 10-km. The model can use a variety of atmospheric forcing ranging from individual meteorological stations, to gridded atmospheric (re)analysis products, to climate-change scenario datasets. It also includes a data assimilation module that allows the assimilation of field and remote sensing datasets.
MicroMet, SnowModel, and SnowAssim can be used for terrestrial and sea-ice applications, and the range of potential output variables includes: air temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, surface temperature, incoming solar radiation, albedo, incoming and outgoing longwave radiation, rain and snow precipitation, snowmelt, sublimation, blowing and drifting snow redistribution, snowmelt runoff, snow depth, snow density, snow water equivalent, snow-on-sea-ice, snow hardness, snow trafficability, rain-on-snow events, changes in snow and growing season lengths, winter soil microbial activity, snow thermal characteristics, and polar bear snowdrift den habitat maps.