Soil, snow, weather, and sub-surface storage data from a mountain catchment in the rain–snow transition zone

Abstract

A comprehensive hydroclimatic data set is presented for the 2011 water year to improve understanding of hydrologic processes in the rain–snow transition zone. This type of data set is extremely rare in scientific literature because of the quality and quantity of soil depth, soil texture, soil moisture, and soil temperature data. Standard meteorological and snow cover data for the entire 2011 water year are included, which include several rain-on-snow (ROS) events. Surface soil textures and soil depths from 57 points are presented as well as soil texture profiles from 14 points. Meteorological data include continuous hourly shielded, unshielded, and wind-corrected precipitation, wind speed and direction, air temperature, relative humidity, dew point temperature, and incoming solar and thermal radiation data. This data is often viewed as "forcing data", and is gap filled and serially complete. Sub-surface data included are hourly soil moisture data from multiple depths from seven soil profiles within the catchment, and soil temperatures from multiple depths from two soil profiles. Hydrologic response data include hourly stream discharge from the catchment outlet weir, continuous snow depths from one location, intermittent snow depths from 5 locations, and snow depth and density data from ten weekly snow surveys. Snow and hydrologic response data are meant to provide data on the catchment hydrologic response to the weather data. This data is mostly presented "as measured" although snow depths from one sensor and streamflow at the catchment outlet have been gap filled and are serially complete. Though the weather, snow, and hydrologic response data only covers one water year, the presentation of the additional subsurface data (soil depth, texture, moisture, and temperature) makes it one of the most detailed and complete hydro-climatic data sets from the climatically sensitive rain–snow transition zone. The data presented are appropriate for a wide range of modeling (energy balance snow modeling, soil capacitance parametric modeling, etc.) and descriptive studies. Data is available at doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.819837.