Terrestrial Snow Cover: Properties, Trends, and Feedbacks. Chris Derksen Climate Research Division, ECCC

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1 Terrestrial Snow Cover: Properties, Trends, and Feedbacks Chris Derksen Climate Research Division, ECCC

2 Outline Three Snow Lectures: 1. Why you should care about snow: Snow and the cryosphere Classes of seasonal snow cover Properties of Arctic snow cover Observed trends in snow cover Snow cover feedbacks 2. How we measure snow; development and evaluation of snow data products 3. Snow and climate modeling Page 2 July 19, 2016

3 The Cryosphere Page 3 July 19, 2016

4 The Cryosphere Derksen et al., 2012 Page 4 July 19, 2016

5 Importance of Snow Snow Trivia: Question: what fraction what of Canada s fraction of land Canada s area is land snow covered area is snow for > covered 6 months for of > the 6 year? months 65% of the year? Weather and Climate: Snow influences surface energy balance, soil moisture and thermal regimes, carbon fluxes, hydrology, fresh water fluxes Ecosystems: Snow provides winter habitat, protects vegetation, but can also impede access to forage Human systems: Snow impacts transportation, frost penetration, snow loads, recreation, avalanche risk Many Challenges working on snow in Canada: lack of in situ data in many regions (Arctic, mountains) challenging environment for in situ measurement systems large uncertainties in satellite-based snow retrievals over dense forest, alpine regions complex local-scale processes (wind redistribution, canopy Page 5 July 19, 2016 interception/unloading, snow albedo-vegetation interactions, meltwater percolation and refreeze )

6 Important component of climate, hydrological and ecological systems Sublimation losses from canopy interception and blowing snow High surface reflectivity Wind redistribution Cold surface (low turbulent exchanges) Low density (good insulator) High emissivity (cools quickly) Latent heat of fusion (heat sink in spring) Snow Ice layers and lenses Snow cover maintains warmer soils allowing infiltration and gas exchanges during winter Water Gases Ground

7 Snow An Important Hydrological Resource Snow cover in the southwest United States, January 2013 versus 2014 NASA Earth Observatory

8 What Shapes Snow Cover on the Ground? Precipitation snow depth Temperature precipitation phase; snow metamorphosis Wind snow redistribution Page 8 July 19, 2016 Sturm et al., 1995

9 Classes of Seasonal Snow on the Ground Physical properties of snow evolve with time Snow is a layered medium Page 9 July 19, 2016

10 Classes of Seasonal Snow on the Ground Physical properties of snow evolve with time Snow is a layered medium Page 10 July 19, 2016 Sturm et al., 1995

11 Classes of Seasonal Snow on the Ground Taiga and tundra are the predominant classes by proportional coverage Alpine snow covers a small extent, but significant as a water resource Page 11 July 19, 2016 Sturm et al., 1995

12 Properties of Arctic Snow: Wind Transport Page 12 July 19, 2016 Sturm and Steufer, 2015

13 Properties of Arctic Snow: Snow Bedforms Transverse dunes Barchan dunes Whaleback Ripples Crag and tail Pits Sastrugi Page 13 July 19, 2016 Filhol and Sturm, 2015

14 Properties of Arctic Snow: Snow Bedforms Ripples Crag and tail Page 14 July 19, 2016 Filhol and Sturm, 2015

15 Properties of Arctic Snow: Thermal Conductivity Page 15 July 19, 2016 Calonne et al., 2013

16 Properties of Arctic Snow: Microstructure Page 16 July 19, mm Derksen et al., 2009

17 Properties of Arctic Snow: Distribution Page 17 July 19, 2016

18 Properties of Arctic Snow: Melt Page 18 July 19, 2016

19 How Do We Learn About Arctic Snow? Not from conventional measurements But by getting out on the land Page 19 July 19, 2016

20 How Do We Learn About Arctic Snow? Page 20 July 19, 2016

21 Properties of Arctic Snow Subarctic High Arctic Depth Density SWE Probability distribution functions (PDFs) of subarctic versus high Arctic snow. Page 21 July 19, 2016 Derksen et al., 2014

22 Trends in the Cryosphere Arctic sea ice volume anomalies from the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS ) U. Washington Polar Science Center Monthly changes in the total mass (Gt) of the Greenland ice sheet estimated from GRACE measurements. Tedesco et al., 2015 NOAA Arctic Report Card Mean annual (red) and cumulative (blue) mass balance from for Arctic glaciers Sharp et al., 2013 Page 22 July 19, 2016 NOAA Arctic Report Card

23 Trends in Snow Cover Extent Monthly snow cover extent (SCE) for Arctic land areas (>60 N) from the NOAA snow chart CDR from 1967 to Anomalies are relative to the average for and standardized. Solid black and red lines depict 5-year running means for North America and Eurasia, respectively. Page 23 July 19, 2016 Derksen and Brown, 2012 (updated)

24 Trends in Snow Cover June SCE (NOAA snow chart CDR) and September SIE (NASA Team), % change per decade in spring snow cover extent and September sea ice extent for running time series starting in 1979 ( , , ) Page 24 July 19, 2016 Derksen et al., 2016

25 Snow Mass Trends Trends computed over period Weak trends in GLDAS NH spread in trends driven by Eurasia; comparatively consistent over North America Page 25 July 19, 2016 Mudryk et al., 2015

26 Impact of Snow Cover Trends The timing of Arctic spring snow melt is climatologically significant because the low albedo of snow-free ground is coupled with increasing solar radiation during the lengthening days of the high latitude spring Proportion of cooling attributable to terrestrial snow approximately the same as Arctic sea ice (Flanner et al., 2011) Clear difference with sea ice albedo feedback is that the Arctic is essentially snow free each summer Page 26 July 19, 2016

27 Radiative Forcing and Albedo Feedback a, The mean influence of the cryosphere during b, Thirty-year changes calculated from linear trends. Negative cryosphere forcing in a indicates that snow and ice decrease the net TOA solar energy flux, and positive changes in b indicate that the cryospheric cooling effect has decreased since Page 27 July 19, 2016 Flanner et al., 2011

28 Snow-Shrub Interactions Reduced snow sublimation from less blowing snow across the (sub)arctic. Deeper, more insulative snow has impacts on plant shelter, soil temperature, and moisture availability which encourages further plant growth. CO2 efflux: Deeper snow might produce higher winter soil temperatures and therefore greater winter efflux, but the greater productivity of shrubs in summer could counteract this carbon loss. Snow albedo: Increased snow depth suggests a longer snow-cover period, but Arctic snow cover melts in 7 10 days, because the snow is thin and melt occurs close to the annual solar maximum. Page 28 July 19, 2016 Sturm et al., 2001

29 Snow-Shrub Interactions The pair of images below shows a site on the Siberian tundra near Russia s Yenisey River in the summers of 1966 (left) and 2009 (right) Although there is anecdotal evidence of Arctic greening, satellite derived metrics are less consistent Circumarctic trends (% change, ) in the magnitude of (a, left) MaxNDVI for Page 29 July 19, 2016 Epstein et al., 2015

30 River Discharge Long-term records of annual discharge for Eurasian and North American Arctic rivers (Holmes et al., 2015). Observed historical spring SWE and discharge for the Colorado River watershed, and projected streamflow changes from a large ensemble of CanESM2 simulations (Fyfe et al., in prep). Page 30 July 19, 2016

31 Summary Terrestrial snow influences (and is influenced by) the climate system, affects ecosystems, and interacts with human systems Arctic snow cover has unique properties (vertical and horizontal) due to strong wind and temperature effects Along with other components of the cryosphere, Arctic snow cover is undergoing rapid change, particularly in the spring melt season Changing Arctic snow cover is connected to feedbacks involving surface albedo, shrubs, and runoff Page 31 July 19, 2016

32 Questions?

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