Fontrodona-Bach, Adrià 
ORCID: 0000-0001-7751-3814
(2024).
Snow accumulation and melt responses to warming across the Northern Hemisphere.
University of Birmingham.
Ph.D.
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Fontrodona-Bach2024PhD.pdf
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Abstract
Snow is an essential component of many Earth systems and its response to global warming is critical to understand. This thesis aims to advance our understanding of snow accumulation and melt responses to global warming. However, research into snow accumulation and melt is hindered by a lack of observations of snowpacks in space and time. This thesis provides a novel, open access dataset of continuous snow water equivalent (SWE) time series across the Northern Hemisphere (the NH-SWE dataset) based on observations of snow depth. This uses an established model to convert snow depth to SWE as well as a regionalisation of model parameters for application at the global scale. The model shows an excellent performance for key snow indicators such as peak SWE and the onset of snowmelt. The new hemispheric dataset is used for investigating long-term trends in snow accumulation and melt. Widespread declines in snow accumulation are shown across the Northern
Hemisphere except the coldest climates. The response of snowmelt rates to warming is more complex, and this work demonstrates a range of both faster and slower melt responses to warming that depends on the combined effects of changes in snow accumulation, amount of warming, and timing of the snow season. As a result, a diversity of snowmelt rate trends is observed across the Northern Hemisphere, highlighting snowmelt changes are complex to predict regionally, and requires understanding the nuances of the key drivers. Additionally, this thesis provides insights into temperature-index snowmelt modelling for applications at the global scale. We show the robustness of using simple snowfall and snowmelt temperature thresholds and estimated degree-day factors validated using the NH-SWE dataset. A simple temperature-index model using temperature and precipitation time series from climate networks shows a good performance in simulating snow water equivalent time series for most stations across the Northern Hemisphere.
| Type of Work: | Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.) | |||||||||||||||
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| Award Type: | Doctorates > Ph.D. | |||||||||||||||
| Supervisor(s): |
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| Licence: | All rights reserved | |||||||||||||||
| College/Faculty: | Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Life & Environmental Sciences | |||||||||||||||
| School or Department: | School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | |||||||||||||||
| Funders: | Natural Environment Research Council | |||||||||||||||
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General) G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GB Physical geography G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences Q Science > QC Physics |
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| URI: | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/14508 |
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