Some Empirical Evidence for the Influence of Snow Cover on Temperature and Precipitation

Namias, Jerome

doi:10.1175/1520-0493(1985)113<1542:seefti>2.0.co;2

Cited by 152 publications

(82 citation statements)

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“…Early case studies showed that snow cover reduces surface temperatures by about 5 • C on both the short-term timescale and on monthly timescales (Namias, 1960(Namias, , 1985Cohen and Rind, 1991;Dewey, 1977;Wagner, 1973). However there has been surprisingly little quantitative observational analysis of the impact of snow on local and regional climate.…”

Section: Impact Of Snow Cover On Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of clouds, land use and snow cover on climate in the Canadian Prairies

2016

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Abstract. This study uses 55 years of hourly observations of air temperature, relative humidity, daily precipitation, snow cover and cloud cover from 15 climate stations across the Canadian Prairies to analyze biosphereatmosphere interactions. We will provide examples of the coupling between climate, snow cover, clouds, and land use. Snow cover acts as a fast climate switch. With the first snow fall, air temperature falls by 10 • C, and a similar increase in temperature occurs with snow melt. Climatologically, days with snow cover are 10 • C cooler than days with no snow cover in Alberta. However the interannual variability has a larger range, so that for every 10 % decrease in days with snow cover, the mean October to April climate is warmer by 1.4 to 1.5 • C. Snow cover also transforms the coupling between clouds and the diurnal cycle of air temperature from a boundary layer regime dominated by shortwave cloud forcing in the warm season to one dominated by longwave cloud forcing with snow cover. Changing agricultural land use in the past thirty years, specifically the reduction of summer fallowing, has cooled and moistened the growing season climate and increased summer precipitation. These hourly climate data provide a solid observational basis for understanding land surface coupling, which can be used to improve the representation of clouds and land-surface processes in atmospheric models.

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Section: Impact Of Snow Cover On Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of clouds, land use and snow cover on climate in the Canadian Prairies

2016

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“…Further, there have been studies in the past that accentuates on boreal autumn (winter) NH snow to be influencing the subsequent (simultaneous) winter AO (Saito et al 2001;Cohen et al 2002;Gong et al 2002). Regional cooling due to excessive snow could potentially create atmospheric effects that propagate to other regions through atmospheric teleconnections (Namias 1985). It is well comprehended that global warming has a direct impact on the Arctic seaice decline leading to frequent occurrences of negative modes of AO causing more recurrent extreme heat and heavy rainfall events over the mid-latitide regions (Francis and Vavrus 2012).…”

Section: Testing Of Hypothesis For a Possible Physical Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…b Auto-correlation analyses of January SST over the defined box with the SSTs over the same area for the subsequent months from February through December. Dashed line indicates the line of significance at 95% loc for the data period considered from 19821985, 1984, 2002, 1990and 2001while the positive SSTI years are 1987, 1998, 2005, 2004, 1989and 1988. These years are arranged according to its decreasing strength of standard anomalies.…”

Section: Implication Of Cold Sst Anomalies On Neismrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Summer monsoon rainfall variability over North East regions of India and its association with Eurasian snow, Atlantic Sea Surface temperature and Arctic Oscillation

Prabhu

Kim

et al. 2016

Clim Dyn

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Nepal and Bangladesh, is influenced by local and remote forces. In terms of geographical size, NE-India constitutes of about 8% of India's total size. Its population is approximately 40 million, which represents around 3.1% of the total Indian population. This region has a predominantly humid sub-tropical climate with hot, humid summers, severe monsoons and mild winters. Along with the west coast of India, this region has some of the Indian sub-continent's last remaining rain forests, which supports diverse flora and fauna and several crop species. Geographically, two-thirds of the area is a hilly terrain interspersed with valleys and plains. The mean summer monsoon rainfall over the NE-Indian region is around 1400 mm making for huge water and hydropower potential. However, this region has been exhibiting a declining trend in the summer monsoon rainfall since the last 4-5 decades (see Fig. 3, Fig. 4a in Preethi et al. 2016). Hence, it becomes imperative to examine the possible drivers of this variability.Significance for long-term prediction of summer monsoon, considering its massive socio-economic impacts, have been widely attributed to the slowly varying boundary conditions such as sea surface temperature (SST) and snow cover (Shukla 1998). In general, rainfall distribution pattern over different regions of India is inhomogeneous due to influence of several local and remote factors. For instance, over the central Indian plain region, monsoon trough and the Himalayas along with local and external factors play a dominant role in its interannual rainfall variability. Likewise, the northwest region is influenced by the dry climates of the Thar Desert and the Western Himalayas. Apparently from the geographical features as described above, the rain producing mechanism of NE rainfall is a complex phenomenon and is largely dominated by an elevated orography of the Eastern Himalayas and large forests. The NE sector may be considered as a separate macro-region within the Indian Abstract This observational study during the 29-year period from 1979 to 2007 evaluates the potential role of Eurasian snow in modulating the North East-Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall with a lead time of almost 6 months. This link is manifested by the changes in high-latitude atmospheric winter snow variability over Eurasia associated with Arctic Oscillation (AO). Excessive wintertime Eurasian snow leads to an anomalous cooling of the overlying atmosphere and is associated with the negative mode of AO, inducing a meridional wave-train descending over the tropical north Atlantic and is associated with cooling of this region. Once the cold anomalies are established over the tropical Atlantic, it persists up to the following summer leading to an anomalous zonal wave-train further inducing a descending branch over NE-India resulting in weak summer monsoon rainfall.

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“…On the other hand, physical features of snow (high albedo, low conductivity) strongly influence the boundary-layer climate, mostly by lowering the air temperature (Wagner, 1973;Dewey, 1977;Walsh et al, 1982;Leathers et al, 1995). Snow may also modify local air circulation, cloudiness and precipitation (Johnson et al, 1984;Namias, 1985).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Snow cover in eastern Europe in relation to temperature, precipitation and circulation

Bednorz

2004

Intl Journal of Climatology

107

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The basic characteristics of snow cover occurrence in eastern Europe are described. For each month from October to May the range of 'active' snow-cover areas in Europe was determined. The boundary criterion for 'active' regions was adopted as snow-cover probability of between 10 and 90%. The correlation coefficients between the snow-cover characteristics (number of days with snow cover and its monthly mean depth) and other climatic variables (temperature and precipitation) were calculated. A strong positive correlation between the annual number of days with snow cover and the annual number of days with mean temperature <0°C was discovered for most parts of the study area. A negative correlation between the monthly number of days with snow cover and monthly mean temperature was found and its spatial distribution was analysed. A positive correlation between snow depth and precipitation appeared significant only in some areas. The influence of atmospheric circulation, expressed by North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) index values, on snow cover in the particular months was analysed. The correlation between the number of days with snow cover and the NAO index is large and statistically significant only in central Europe and it becomes insignificant to the east of 30°λ E. High values are noted only in the winter months. In autumn and spring, when the range of the 'active' areas moves to the east and the NAO becomes weak, the correlation is very small.

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Some Empirical Evidence for the Influence of Snow Cover on Temperature and Precipitation

Cited by 152 publications

References 0 publications

The impact of clouds, land use and snow cover on climate in the Canadian Prairies

The impact of clouds, land use and snow cover on climate in the Canadian Prairies

Summer monsoon rainfall variability over North East regions of India and its association with Eurasian snow, Atlantic Sea Surface temperature and Arctic Oscillation

Snow cover in eastern Europe in relation to temperature, precipitation and circulation

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