Data · dataset · 2026
Modeling the influence of hypsometry, vegetation, and storm energy on snowmelt contributions to basins during rain-on-snow floods
Listed in National Center for Atmospheric Research
Point observations and previous basin modeling efforts have suggested that snowmelt may be a significant input of water for runoff during extreme rain-on-snow floods within western U.S. basins.
Description
Quantifying snowmelt input over entire basins is difficult given sparse observations of snowmelt. In order to provide a range of snowmelt contributions for water managers, a physically based snow model coupled with an idealized basin representation was evaluated in point simulations and used to quantify the maximum basin-wide input from snowmelt volume during flood events.
Maximum snowmelt basin contributions and uncertainty ranges were estimated as 29% (11-47%), 29% (8-37%), and 7% (2-24%) of total rain plus snowmelt input, within the Snoqualmie, East North Fork Feather, and Upper San Joaquin basins, respectively, during historic flooding events between 1980 and 2008. The idealized basin representation revealed that both hypsometry and forest cover of a basin had similar magnitude of impacts on the basin-wide snowmelt totals.
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However, the characteristics of a given storm (antecedent SWE and available energy for melt) controlled how much hypsometry and forest cover impacted basin-wide snowmelt. These results indicate that for watershed managers, flood forecasting efforts should prioritize rainfall prediction first, but cannot neglect snowmelt contributions in some cases. Efforts to reduce the uncertainty in the above snowmelt simulations should focus on improving the meteorological forcing data (especially air temperature and wind speed) in complex terrain.
Links
Get the data
- Publisher page n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7vx0j0t ↗
documentation · download · from data ucar edu
Where it is published
- data.ucar.edu /dataset/modeling-the-influence-of-hypsometry-vegetation-and-st… ↗
National Center for Atmospheric Research dataset page
landing page · from data ucar edu
Catalogue records · 1
- CKAN API data.ucar.edu/api/3/action/package_show?id=847be511-48cd-4374-af31-f7cd9d0f1… ↗
metadata API · from data ucar edu
Topics
- From keywords
- Earth & Environmental Science · Ocean & Atmospheric Science
- Inferred from text
- Ecohydrology 75%
Provenance · 1 source records, 8 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Center for Atmospheric Research | 847be511-48cd-4374-af31-f7cd9d0f1108 | 11 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| concepts[field].anzsrc:field:370702 | enrichment · data ucar edu | taxonomy-embedding@1.1.0 | title+keywords+description (75%) |
| concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmental | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmospheric | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| created_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| description | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /notes |
| publication_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /title |
| updated_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 |