Publications related to Monthly trends and the corresponding altitudinal shift in the snowfall/precipitation day ratio

Good enough: Intermediate complexity atmospheric models improve the representation of processes affecting seasonal snow

Snow plays a crucial role in processes regulating ecosystems, the climate, and human development. Mountain snowpack in particular has great relevance for downstream communities. Knowledge about the distribution and properties of the snowpack thus help in p ...

EPFL2024

Turbulence and Heat exchange in the Near-Surface Boundary Layer over Patchy Snow

Michael Haugeneder

The atmospheric layer adjacent to the earth's surface is of crucial importance for weather models due to the exchange of energy between the surface and the atmosphere. This exchange is dependent on the various surface properties and influences the state of ...

EPFL2024

Impact of intercepted and sub-canopy snow microstructure on snowpack response to rain-on-snow events under a boreal canopy

Michael Lehning, Daniel Nadeau, Nander Wever, Adrien Michel, Benjamin Bouchard

Rain-on-snow events can cause severe flooding in snow-dominated regions. These are expected to become more frequent in the future as climate change shifts the precipitation from snowfall to rainfall. However, little is known about how winter rainfall inter ...

2024

Assessing the simulation of snowfall at Dumont d'Urville, Antarctica, during the YOPP-SH special observing campaign

Alexis Berne, Etienne Gabriel Henri Vignon

The performance of a set of atmospheric models and meteorological reanalyses in the representation of precipitation days in Antarctica is assessed using ground-based observations such as a precipitation gauge and a Micro Rain Radar during the Year Of Polar ...

WILEY2023

Snowfall and snow accumulation during the MOSAiC winter and spring seasons

Marc Oggier, Michael Lehning, Marc Schneebeli Zeugin, David Nicholas Wagner, Markus Frey

Data from the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition allowed us to investigate the temporal dynamics of snowfall, snow accumulation and erosion in great detail for almost the whole accumulation season (No ...

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH2022

A Novel Method to Quantify Near-Surface Boundary-Layer Dynamics at Ultra-High Spatio-Temporal Resolution

Michael Lehning, Tobias Jonas, Dylan Stewart Reynolds, Michael Haugeneder

The lateral transport of heat above abrupt (sub-)metre-scale steps in land surface temperature influences the local surface energy balance. We present a novel experimental method to investigate the stratification and dynamics of the near-surface atmospheri ...

SPRINGER2023

Meteorology and snow transport at S17 near Syowa, Antarctica, in austral summer 2018/2019

Michael Lehning, Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Varun Sharma, Francesco Comola, Jérôme François Sylvain Dujardin, Daniela Brito Melo, Armin Sigmund

This dataset contains measurement and simulation data. The measurements characterize the standard meteorology, turbulence, and snow transport at the S17 site near Syowa Station in East Antarctica during an expedition in austral summer 2018/2019. Large-eddy ...

2021

Snowfall and snow accumulation processes during the MOSAiC winter and spring season

Marc Oggier, Michael Lehning, Marc Schneebeli Zeugin, David Nicholas Wagner, Markus Frey

Data from the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition allowed us to investigate the temporal dynamics of snowfall, snow accumulation, and erosion in great detail for almost the whole accumulation season (N ...

2021

Leveraging meteorological radars to investigate the influence of atmospheric dynamics on snowfall microphysics

Josué Etienne Gehring

Precipitation is the result of a chain of meteorological processes ranging from the large- to the micro-scale. While the transport of moisture and lifting mechanisms leading to cloud formation are mostly governed by dynamical processes, the formation and g ...

EPFL2021

Simulation of long-term spatiotemporal variations in regional-scale groundwater recharge: contributions of a water budget approach in cold and humid climates

Emmanuel Qays Dubois

Groundwater recharge (GWR) is a strategic hydrologic variable, and its estimate is necessary to implement sustainable groundwater management. This is especially true in a global warming context that highly impacts key winter conditions in cold and humid cl ...

2021

Changes in Climatology, Snow Cover, and Ground Temperatures at High Alpine Locations

Michael Lehning

Knowledge about changes in ground temperatures under a changing climate is important for many environmental, economic, and infrastructure applications and can be estimated by transient numerical simulations. However, a full annual cycle of precipitation da ...

2020

Undercatch Adjustments for Tipping-Bucket Gauge Measurements of Solid Precipitation

Audrey Reverdin

Heated tipping-bucket (TB) gauges are used broadly in national weather monitoring networks, but their performance for the measurement of solid precipitation has not been well characterized. Manufacturer-provided TB gauges were evaluated at five test sites ...

AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC2020

The Importance of Near-Surface Winter Precipitation Processes in Complex Alpine Terrain

Michael Lehning, Franziska Gerber

In this study, near-surface snow and graupel dynamics from formation to deposition are analyzed using WRF in a large-eddy configuration. The results reveal that a horizontal grid spacing of ≤50 m is required to resolve local orographic precipitation enhanc ...

2019

The vertical structure of precipitation at two stations in East Antarctica derived from micro rain radars

Alexis Berne, Jacopo Grazioli

Precipitation over Antarctica is the main term in the surface mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet, which is crucial for the future evolution of the sea level worldwide. Precipitation, however, remains poorly documented and understood mainly because of ...

Copernicus GmbH2019

Snowpack runoff formation processes during rain-on-snow events

Sebastian Würzer

Rain-on-snow (ROS) events cause repeated flooding in many mountainous regions with a seasonal snow cover. The complex interaction of processes across spatial scales makes it difficult to accurately predict the effect of snow cover on runoff formation for a ...

EPFL2018

Investigation of snow melt dynamics and boundary layer processes over a melting snow surface

Sebastian Schlögl

In this thesis, we investigate the surface energy balance of a snow pack for a continuous and a patchy snow cover. Snow surface temperatures have been validated to assess the accuracy of the surface energy balance of a continuous snow pack for individual p ...

EPFL2018

From the clouds to the ground - Effects of flow-precipitation interactions on snow distribution in complex alpine terrain

Franziska Gerber

Knowledge about the spatial distribution of seasonal snow is essential e.g. to efficiently manage fresh water resources or for hydro-power companies. The large-scale gradient of snow accumulation over mountain ranges is mainly determined by lifting condens ...

EPFL2018

Is the Thorpe and Mason model valid for drifting and blowing snow?

Michael Lehning, Varun Sharma, Francesco Comola

Sublimation of drifting and blowing snow has been recognized as an important component of the surface mass budget of polar and alpine regions. The Thorpe and Mason (TM) model is the basis of all existing small and largescale estimates of drifting snow sub ...

Copernicus2018

How Are Turbulent Sensible Heat Fluxes and Snow Melt Rates Affected by a Changing Snow Cover Fraction?

Michael Lehning

The complex interaction between the atmospheric boundary layer and the heterogeneous land surface is typically not resolved in numerical models approximating the turbulent heat exchange processes. In this study, we consider the effect of the land surface h ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2018

On the suitability of the Thorpe-Mason model for calculating sublimation of saltating snow

Michael Lehning, Varun Sharma, Francesco Comola

The Thorpe and Mason (TM) model for calculating the mass lost from a sublimating snow grain is the basis of all existing small-and large-scale estimates of drifting snow sublimation and the associated snow mass balance of polar and alpine regions. We revis ...

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH2018