scholarly journals Evaluating the Utah Energy Balance (UEB) snow model in the Noah land-surface model

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 3553-3570 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Sultana ◽  
K.-L. Hsu ◽  
J. Li ◽  
S. Sorooshian

Abstract. Noah (version 2.7.1), the community land-surface model (LSM) of National Centers for Environmental Predictions-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP-NCAR), which is widely used to describe the land-surface processes either in stand-alone or in coupled land-atmospheric model systems, is recognized to underestimate snow–water equivalent (SWE). Noah's SWE bias can be attributed to its simple snow sub-model, which does not effectively describe the physical processes during snow accumulation and melt period. To improve SWE simulation in the Noah LSM, the Utah Energy Balance (UEB) snow model is implemented in Noah to test alternate snow surface temperature and snowmelt outflow schemes. Snow surface temperature was estimated using the force-restore method and snowmelt event is regulated by accounting for the internal energy of the snowpack. The modified Noah's SWE simulations are compared with the SWE observed at California's NRCS SNOTEL stations for 7 water years: 2002–2008, while the model's snow surface temperature is verified with observed surface-temperature data at an observation site in Utah. The experiments show that modification in Noah's snow process substantially reduced SWE estimation bias while keeping the simplicity of the Noah LSM. The results suggest that the model did not benefit from the alternate temperature representation but primary improvement can be attributed to the substituted snowmelt process.

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 13363-13406
Author(s):  
R. Sultana ◽  
K.-L. Hsu ◽  
J. Li ◽  
S. Sorooshian

Abstract. Noah (version 2.7.1), the community land-surface model (LSM) of NCEP-NCAR, which is widely used to describe the land-surface processes either in stand-alone or in coupled land–atmospheric model systems, is recognized because snow–water equivalent (SWE) can be underestimated. Noah's SWE bias can be attributed to its simple snow sub-model, which does not effectively describe the physical processes during snow accumulation and melt period. To improve SWE simulation in the Noah LSM, the Utah Energy Balance (UEB) snow model is implemented in Noah to test alternate snow-surface temperature and snow-melt outflow schemes. Snow surface temperature was estimated using force–restore method and snow melt event is regulated by accounting for the internal energy of the snowpack. The modified Noah SWE is compared with the SWE observed at California's NRCS SNOTEL stations for seven water years: 2002–2008, while the model snow-surface temperature is verified with observed surface-temperature data at an observation site in Utah. The experiments show that modification in Noah's snow process substantially reduced SWE estimation bias while keeping the simplicity of the Noah LSM. The results suggest that the model did not benefit from the alternate temperature representation but primary improvement can be attributed to the substituted snow melt process.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 3863-3890 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Luce ◽  
D. G. Tarboton

Abstract. The snow surface temperature is an important quantity in the snow energy balance, since it modulates the exchange of energy between the surface and the atmosphere as well as the conduction of energy into the snowpack. It is therefore important to correctly model snow surface temperatures in energy balance snowmelt models. This paper focuses on the relationship between snow surface temperature and conductive energy fluxed that drive the energy balance of a snowpack. Time series of snow temperature at the surface and through the snowpack were measured to examine energy conduction in a snowpack. Based on these measurements we calculated the snowpack energy content and conductive energy flux at the snow surface. We then used these estimates of conductive energy flux to evaluate formulae for the calculation of the conductive flux at the snow surface based on surface temperature time series. We use a method based on Fourier frequency analysis to estimate snow thermal properties. Among the formulae evaluated, we found that a modified force-restore formula, based on the superimposition of the force-restore equation capturing diurnal fluctuations on a gradually changing temperature gradient, had the best agreement with observations of heat conduction. This formula is suggested for the parameterization of snow surface temperature in a full snowpack energy balance model.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. S. Benavides Pinjosovsky ◽  
S. Thiria ◽  
C. Ottlé ◽  
J. Brajard ◽  
F. Badran ◽  
...  

Abstract. The SECHIBA module of the ORCHIDEE land surface model describes the exchanges of water and energy between the surface and the atmosphere. In the present paper, the adjoint semi-generator software denoted YAO was used as a framework to implement a 4D-VAR assimilation method. The objective was to deliver the adjoint model of SECHIBA (SECHIBA-YAO) obtained with YAO to provide an opportunity for scientists and end users to perform their own assimilation. SECHIBA-YAO allows the control of the eleven most influent internal parameters of SECHIBA or of the initial conditions of the soil water content by observing the land surface temperature measured in situ or as it could be observed by remote sensing as brightness temperature. The paper presents the fundamental principles of the 4D-Var assimilation, the semi-generator software YAO and some experiments showing the accuracy of the adjoint code distributed. In addition, a distributed version is available when only the land surface temperature is observed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 15071-15118 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. You ◽  
D. G. Tarboton ◽  
C. H. Luce

Abstract. \\label{sec:abstract} Snow surface temperature is a key control on energy exchanges at the snow surface, particularly net longwave radiation and turbulent energy fluxes. The snow surface temperature is in turn controlled by the balance between various external fluxes and the conductive heat flux, internal to the snowpack. Because of the strong insulating properties of snow, thermal gradients in snow packs are large and nonlinear, a fact that has led many to advocate multiple layer snowmelt models over single layer models. In an effort to keep snowmelt modeling simple and parsimonious, the Utah Energy Balance (UEB) snowmelt model used only one layer but allowed the snow surface temperature to be different from the snow average temperature by using an equilibrium gradient parameterization based on the surface energy balance. Although this procedure was considered an improvement over the ordinary single layer snowmelt models, it still resulted in discrepancies between modeled and measured snowpack energy contents. In this paper we examine the parameterization of snow surface temperature in single layer snowmelt models from the perspective of heat conduction into a semi-infinite medium. We evaluate the equilibrium gradient approach, the force-restore approach, and a modified force-restore approach. In addition, we evaluate a scheme for representing the penetration of a refreezing front in cold periods following melt. We also introduce a method to adjust effective conductivity to account for the presence of ground near to a shallow snow surface. These parameterizations were tested against data from the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, CA, Utah State University experimental farm, UT, and Subnivean snow laboratory at Niwot Ridge, CO. These tests compare modeled and measured snow surface temperature, snow energy content, snow water equivalent, and snowmelt outflow. We found that with these refinements the model is able to better represent the snowpack energy balance and internal energy content while still retaining a parsimonious one layer format.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hector Simon Benavides Pinjosovsky ◽  
Sylvie Thiria ◽  
Catherine Ottlé ◽  
Julien Brajard ◽  
Fouad Badran ◽  
...  

Abstract. The SECHIBA module of the ORCHIDEE land surface model describes the exchanges of water and energy between the surface and the atmosphere. In the present paper, the adjoint semi-generator software called YAO was used as a framework to implement a 4D-VAR assimilation scheme of observations in SECHIBA. The objective was to deliver the adjoint model of SECHIBA (SECHIBA-YAO) obtained with YAO to provide an opportunity for scientists and end users to perform their own assimilation. SECHIBA-YAO allows the control of the 11 most influential internal parameters of the soil water content, by observing the land surface temperature or remote sensing data such as the brightness temperature. The paper presents the fundamental principles of the 4D-VAR assimilation, the semi-generator software YAO and a large number of experiments showing the accuracy of the adjoint code in different conditions (sites, PFTs, seasons). In addition, a distributed version is available in the case for which only the land surface temperature is observed.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Luce ◽  
D. G. Tarboton

Abstract. The snow surface temperature is an important quantity in the snow energy balance, since it modulates the exchange of energy between the surface and the atmosphere as well as the conduction of energy into the snowpack. It is therefore important to correctly model snow surface temperatures in energy balance snowmelt models. This paper focuses on the relationship between snow surface temperature and conductive energy fluxes that drive the energy balance of a snowpack. Time series of snow temperature at the surface and through the snowpack were measured to examine energy conduction in a snowpack. Based on these measurements we calculated the snowpack energy content and conductive energy flux at the snow surface. We then used these estimates of conductive energy flux to evaluate formulae for the calculation of the conductive flux at the snow surface based on surface temperature time series. We use a method based on Fourier frequency analysis to estimate snow thermal properties. Among the formulae evaluated, we found that a modified force-restore formula, based on the superimposition of the force-restore equation capturing diurnal fluctuations on a gradually changing temperature gradient, had the best agreement with observations of heat conduction. This formula is suggested for the parameterization of snow surface temperature in a full snowpack energy balance model.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 3101
Author(s):  
Donghang Shao ◽  
Wenbo Xu ◽  
Hongyi Li ◽  
Jian Wang ◽  
Xiaohua Hao

Snow surface spectral reflectance is very important in the Earth’s climate system. Traditional land surface models with parameterized schemes can simulate broadband snow surface albedo but cannot accurately simulate snow surface spectral reflectance with continuous and fine spectral wavebands, which constitute the major observations of current satellite sensors; consequently, there is an obvious gap between land surface model simulations and remote sensing observations. Here, we suggest a new integrated scheme that couples a radiative transfer model with a land surface model to simulate high spectral resolution snow surface reflectance information specifically targeting multisource satellite remote sensing observations. Our results indicate that the new integrated model can accurately simulate snow surface reflectance information over a large spatial scale and continuous time series. The integrated model extends the range of snow spectral reflectance simulation to the whole shortwave band and can predict snow spectral reflectance changes in the solar spectrum region based on meteorological element data. The kappa coefficients (K) of both the narrowband snow albedo targeting Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data simulated by the new integrated model and the retrieved snow albedo based on MODIS reflectance data are 0.5, and both exhibit good spatial consistency. Our proposed narrowband snow albedo simulation scheme targeting satellite remote sensing observations is consistent with remote sensing satellite observations in time series and can predict narrowband snow albedo even during periods of missing remote sensing observations. This new integrated model is a significant improvement over traditional land surface models for the direct spectral observations of satellite remote sensing. The proposed model could contribute to the effective combination of snow surface reflectance information from multisource remote sensing observations with land surface models.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Bernus ◽  
Catherine Ottle ◽  
Nina Raoult

<p>Lakes play a major role on local climate and boundary layer stratification. At global scale, they have been shown to have an impact on the energy budget, (see for example Le Moigne et al., 2016 or Bonan, 1995 ) . To represent the energy budget of lakes at a global scale, the FLake (Mironov et al, 2008) lake model has been coupled to the ORCHIDEE land surface model - the continental part of the IPSL earth system model. By including Flake in ORCHIDEE, we aim to improve the representation of land surface temperature and heat fluxes. Using the standard CMIP6 configuration of ORCHIDEE,  two 40-year simulations were generated (one coupled with FLake and one without) using the CRUJRA meteorological forcing data at a spatial resolution of 0.5°. We compare land surface temperatures and heat fluxes from the two ORCHIDEE simulations and assess the impacts of lakes on surface energy budgets. MODIS satellite land surface temperature products will be used to validate the simulations. We expect a better fit between the simulated land surface temperature and the MODIS data when the FLake configuration is used. The preliminary results of the comparison will be presented.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (16) ◽  
pp. 4722-4740 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos L. Pérez-Díaz ◽  
Tarendra Lakhankar ◽  
Peter Romanov ◽  
Jonathan Muñoz ◽  
Reza Khanbilvardi ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 631-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Magand ◽  
Agnès Ducharne ◽  
Nicolas Le Moine ◽  
Simon Gascoin

Abstract The Durance watershed (14 000 km2), located in the French Alps, generates 10% of French hydropower and provides drinking water to 3 million people. The Catchment land surface model (CLSM), a distributed land surface model (LSM) with a multilayer, physically based snow model, has been applied in the upstream part of this watershed, where snowfall accounts for 50% of the precipitation. The CLSM subdivides the upper Durance watershed, where elevations range from 800 to 4000 m within 3580 km2, into elementary catchments with an average area of 500 km2. The authors first show the difference between the dynamics of the accumulation and ablation of the snow cover using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images and snow-depth measurements. The extent of snow cover increases faster during accumulation than during ablation because melting occurs at preferential locations. This difference corresponds to the presence of a hysteresis in the snow-cover depletion curve of these catchments, and the CLSM was adapted by implementing such a hysteresis in the snow-cover depletion curve of the model. Different simulations were performed to assess the influence of the parameterizations on the water budget and the evolution of the extent of the snow cover. Using six gauging stations, the authors demonstrate that introducing a hysteresis in the snow-cover depletion curve improves melting dynamics. They conclude that their adaptation of the CLSM contributes to a better representation of snowpack dynamics in an LSM that enables mountainous catchments to be modeled for impact studies such as those of climate change.


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