Climate change impact on snow and soil temperature in boreal Scots pine stands

Abstract

Scenarios indicate that the air temperature will increase in high latitude regions in coming decades, causing the snow covered period to shorten, the growing season to lengthen and soil temperatures to change during the winter, spring and early summer. To evaluate how a warmer climate is likely to alter the snow cover and soil temperature in Scots pine stands of varying ages in northern Sweden, climate scenarios from the Swedish regional climate modelling programme SWECLIM were used to drive a Soil-VegetationAtmosphere Transfer (SVAT)-model (COUP). Using the two CO 2 emission scenarios A and B in the Hadley centres global climate model, HadleyA and HadleyB, SWECLIM predicts that the annual mean air temperature and precipitation will increase at most 4.8°C and 315 mm, respectively, within a century in the study region. The results of this analysis indicate that a warmer climate will shorten the period of persistent snow pack by 73-93 days, increase the average soil temperature by 0.9-1.5°C at 10 cm depth, advance soil warming by 15-19 days in spring and cause more soil freeze-thaw cycles by 31-38%. The results also predict that the large current variations in snow cover due to variations in tree interception and topography will be enhanced in the coming century, resulting in increased spatial variability in soil temperatures.

Soil temperature responses to climate change along a gradient of upland–riparian transect in boreal forest

“…Although, our assumption that current climate conditions may still hold in the future in our RCM projections, it can contribute another degree to the amplification of uncertainty as climate gets warmer in the future (Boberg and Christensen 2012). Our projected increase in precipitation (17%) and air temperature (up to 3.7°C) is in line with several other independent studies that projected warmer wetter conditions for snow dominated boreal ecosystems (Brown and Robinson 2011;Mellander et al 2007;Teutschbein and Seibert 2012). This will have implications for winter snow and spring melt hydrology as dormant season days with air temperature below 0°C could be shortened considerably compared to the present-day climatic conditions (Oni et al , 2016.…”

Daily precipitation intensity projected for the 21st century: seasonal changes over the Pyrenees

“…The A2 scenario assumes strong increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases in upcoming decades (Nakicenovic et al 1998) and is the most used by the scientific community to assess the impacts of climate change at the end of the 21st century Christensen 2003, 2004;Frei 2006;Beniston 2006;Beniston et al 2007;Blenkinsop and Fowler 2007;Mellander et al 2007).. The resolution of the RCMs was close to 50 km (grid spacings of 0.44-0.50°).…”

Effects of climate change on the intensity and frequency of heavy snowfall events in the Pyrenees

“…Most previous studies have focused on potential changes in the accumulated snowpack in cold and mountain regions. This is of interest because snow controls numerous environmental and ecological processes (Mellander et al 2007;Jonas et al 2008a, b), determines the amount of water available for urban and agricultural water supply and hydropower production, and affects the potential development of economic activities such as those related to winter tourism (Beniston 2003;Barnett et al 2005;Lasanta et al 2007;Uhlmann et al 2009). However, much less attention has been paid to potential changes in extreme snowfall events.…”

“…As global temperature is expected to increase in coming decades, most previous regional studies have highlighted the likelihood of a sharp decrease in accumulated snowpack, a shortening of the snow-cover season, and a decreased and earlier spring freshet (Rasmus et al 2004;Dankers and Christensen 2005;Merritt et al 2006;Hantel and Hirtl-Wielke 2007;Mellander et al 2007). However, there are few estimates of the potential changes in heavy snowfall events (HSEs) as a consequence of projected climate change.…”