Interactions between snow cover and evaporation lead to higher sensitivity of streamflow to temperature

Details

• Journal Title:
  Communications Earth & Environment
• Personal Author:
  Meira Neto, Antônio Alves ; Niu, Guo-Yue ; Roy, Tirthankar ; Tyler, Scott ; Troch, Peter A.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; WPO (Weather Program Office)
• Description:
  Estimates of potential evaporation often neglect the effects of snow cover on evaporation process. Here, we present a definition of potential evaporation that explicitly accounts for landscapes that are partially covered by snow. We show that, in the presence of snowpack, our evaporation estimates differ from conventional methods that assume evaporation from a free water surface. Specifically, we find that conventional methods overestimate potential evaporation as well as aridity, taken as the ratio of atmospheric water demand to supply, in landscapes where snowfall is significant. With dwindling snow-cover, actual aridity increases, which could explain the reduction in streamflow with decreasing snowfall. We suggest that streamflow, and hence water availability, is more sensitive to temperature changes in colder than in warmer regions.
• Source:
  Communications Earth & Environment, 1(1)
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-020-00056-9
• ISSN:
  2662-4435
• Format:
  PDF
• Publisher:
  Springer Science and Business Media LLC
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  Grant no. NA18OAR4590397
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC BY
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ce474413a1ec95e00f0c1a214e1f2b01f6852f851cc284f77c2aa674bdfd5e5f769630abfff824e5dc7d7131276cf3ea776fe41a7123395fbf50d4f42c1c3885
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/70182/noaa_70182_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.25 MB ]