Publications related to CLIMACT - Administration

Snowfall deposition in mountainous terrain: a statistical downscaling scheme from high-resolution model data on simulated topographies

One of the primary causes of non-uniform snowfall deposition on the ground in mountainous regions is the preferential deposition of snow, which results from the interaction of near-surface winds with topography and snow particles. However, producing high-r ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

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

Dylan Stewart Reynolds

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

Intermediate complexity atmospheric modeling in complex terrain: is it right?

Michael Lehning, Dylan Stewart Reynolds, Michael Haugeneder

Dynamic downscaling of atmospheric forcing data to the hectometer resolution has shown increases in accuracy for landsurface models, but at great computational cost. Here we present a validation of a novel intermediate complexity atmospheric model, HICAR, ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

Understanding snow saltation parameterizations: lessons from theory, experiments and numerical simulations

Michael Lehning, Armin Sigmund, Daniela Brito Melo

Drifting and blowing snow are important features in polar and high mountain regions. They control the surface mass balance in windy conditions and influence sublimation of snow and ice surfaces. Despite their importance, model representations in weather an ...

2024

A seasonal snowpack model forced with dynamically downscaled forcing data resolves hydrologically relevant accumulation patterns

Michael Lehning, Dylan Stewart Reynolds, Tobias Jonas

The Mountain snowpack stores months of winter precipitation at high elevations, supplying snowmelt to lowland areas in drier seasons for agriculture and human consumption worldwide. Accurate seasonal predictions of the snowpack are thus of great importance ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

On the importance of the humidity flux for the surface mass balance in the accumulation zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Sonja Wahl

It is highly uncertain how the humidity flux between the snow surface and the atmosphere contributes to the surface mass balance (SMB) of the interior Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). Due to sparse observations, evaluations of the simulated humidity flux are li ...

Copernicus Gesellschaft Mbh2024

Comparison of selected surface level ERA5 variables against in‐situ observations in the continental Arctic

Julia Schmale, Jakob Boyd Pernov, Jules Gros-Daillon

In this study, data from 17 ground-based, continental Arctic observatories areused to evaluate the performance of the European Centre for Medium-RangeWeather Forecasts Reanalysis version 5 (ERA5) reanalysis model. Three aspectsare evaluated: (i) the overal ...

2024

Modular Multiplatform Compatible Air Measurement System (MoMuCAMS): a new modular platform for boundary layer aerosol and trace gas vertical measurements in extreme environments

Julia Schmale, Andrea Baccarini, Roman Pohorsky

The Modular Multiplatform Compatible Air Measurement System (MoMuCAMS) is a newly developed in situ aerosol and trace gas measurement platform for lower-atmospheric vertical profiling. MoMuCAMS has been primarily designed to be attached to a Helikite, a ru ...

2024

Improvements to the dynamic wake meandering model by incorporating the turbulent Schmidt number

Fernando Porté Agel, Peter Andreas Brugger, Corey Dean Markfort

Predictions of the dynamic wake meandering model (DWMM) were compared to flow measurements of a scanning Doppler lidar mounted on the nacelle of a utility-scale wind turbine. We observed that the wake meandering strength of the DWMM agrees better with the ...

2024

Network time series forecasting in photovoltaics power production

Jelena Simeunovic

Accurate forecasting of photovoltaic (PV) power production is crucial for the integration of more renewable energy sources into the power grid. PV power production is highly intermittent, due to the stochastic cloud behaviour and cloud dynamics. Previous w ...

EPFL2024

Urban boundary-layer flows in complex terrain: Dynamic interactions during a hot and dry summer season in Phoenix, Arizona

Aldo Brandi

Anthropogenic modification of natural landscapes to urban environments impacts land-atmosphere interactions in the boundary layer. Ample research has demonstrated the effect of such landscape transitions on development of the urban heat island (UHI), but c ...

Wiley2024

Influence of sun cups on surface albedo of wet Alpine snowpack

Michael Lehning, Mathias Thierry Pierre Bavay, Francesca Carletti

In high elevation Alpine areas, characterised by high snow accumulation and radiation-driven melt processes, the formation of peculiar ablation features called sun cups can be observed. Sun cups likely influence the energy and mass balance of the wet snowp ...

2024

Turbulence in the Strongly Heterogeneous Near-Surface Boundary Layer over Patchy Snow

Michael Lehning, Dylan Stewart Reynolds, Michael Haugeneder

The near-surface boundary layer above patchy snow cover in mountainous terrain is characterized by a highly complex interplay of various flows on multiple scales. In this study, we present data from a comprehensive field campaign that cover a period of 21 ...

2024

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

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

The Influence of the Planetary Boundary Layer on the Atmospheric State at an Orographic Site at the Eastern Mediterranean

Athanasios Nenes, Romanos Foskinis, Kunfeng Gao

We studied the influence of the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) on the air masses sampled at the mountaintop Hellenic Atmospheric Aerosol and Climate Change station ((HAC) 2 ) at Mount Helmos (Greece) during the Cloud-AerosoL InteractionS in the Helmos back ...

Stockholm Univ Press2024

Towards an improved understanding of wind turbine wakes in complex terrain

Arslan Salim Dar

In this thesis, we explored the effect of certain terrain-induced flow phenomena on the development of wind turbines sited in complex terrain. A combined experimental and analytical approach is used to study wind turbine wakes in different types of complex ...

EPFL2024

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Flow and Hydrochemistry in Drainage Networks

Izabela Bujak-Ozga

Despite their high ecological value, non-perennial streams have received less attention than their perennial counterparts. This doctoral thesis addresses this disparity by advancing knowledge on the dynamics of the drainage density and hydrologic processes ...

EPFL2024

Quantifying the Unknown: Data-Driven Approaches and Applications in Energy Systems

Paul Scharnhorst

In light of the challenges posed by climate change and the goals of the Paris Agreement, electricity generation is shifting to a more renewable and decentralized pattern, while the operation of systems like buildings is increasingly electrified. This calls ...

EPFL2024

Data and scripts for "Unraveling secondary ice production in winter orographic clouds through a synergy of in-situ observations, remote sensing and modeling"

Athanasios Nenes, Alexis Berne, Satoshi Takahama, Georgia Sotiropoulou, Paraskevi Georgakaki, Romanos Foskinis, Kunfeng Gao, Anne-Claire Marie Billault--Roux

This repository contains field observations and processed data from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations and the Cloud Resolving Model Radar Simulator (CR-SIM), alongside scripts designed to reproduce the figures presented in the pa ...

Zenodo2024