An Approaching on Estimating of Snow Depth and Snow Water Equivalent

Abstract

Snow water equivalent (SWE) and snow depth (SD) is estimating using Snow 17 model for several meteorological mountain stations from Romania. The model uses air temperature as the sole index to determine the energy exchange across the snow-air interface. In addition to temperature, the only other input variable needed to run the model is precipitation. The estimating values was validated with measurements values from respective point stations. It was observed that depending on the elevation station the values estimated have different errors. It is a strong correlation between estimating and observed values of SWE for Sinaia station (r = 0.96), Balea Station (r = 0.92), whereas for Vf. Omu station the correlation is weaker (r = 0.82). Regarding the SD values, the negligible difference can be found between modelled and observed data. Importantly, this study validates a model applied to the several meteorological stations from Romania.

Keywords

• climate change
• modelling
• estimated
• snow water equivalent
• melt process
• precipitation
• temperature