Publication Date:
2018-01-30
Description:
Despite the importance of mountain snowpack to understanding the water and energy cycles in North America's montane regions, no reliable mountain snow climatology exists for the entire continent. We present a new estimate of mountain snow water equivalent (SWE) for North America from regional climate model simulations. Climatological peak SWE in North America mountains is 1006 km 3 , 2.94 times larger than previous estimates from reanalyses. By combining this mountain SWE value with the best available global product in non-mountain areas, we estimate peak North America SWE of 1684 km 3 , 55% greater than previous estimates. In our simulations, the date of maximum SWE varies widely by mountain range, from early March to mid-April. Though mountains comprise 24% of the continent's land area, we estimate that they contain ~60% of North American SWE. This new estimate is a suitable benchmark for continental- and global-scale water and energy budget studies.
Print ISSN:
0094-8276
Electronic ISSN:
1944-8007
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Physics
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