Articles | Volume 13, issue 7
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-1767-2019
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-1767-2019
Research article
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04 Jul 2019
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 04 Jul 2019

Converting snow depth to snow water equivalent using climatological variables

David F. Hill, Elizabeth A. Burakowski, Ryan L. Crumley, Julia Keon, J. Michelle Hu, Anthony A. Arendt, Katreen Wikstrom Jones, and Gabriel J. Wolken

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Cited articles

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Burakowski, E. A., Wake, C. P., Stampone, M., and Dibb, J.: Putting the Capital “A” in CoCoRAHS: An Experimental Program to Measure Albedo using the Community Collaborative Rain Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) Network, Hydrol. Process., 27, 3024–3034, https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.9825, 2013. 
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Short summary
We present a new statistical model for converting snow depths to water equivalent. The only variables required are snow depth, day of year, and location. We use the location to look up climatological parameters such as mean winter precipitation and mean temperature difference (difference between hottest month and coldest month). The model is simple by design so that it can be applied to depth measurements anywhere, anytime. The model is shown to perform better than other widely used approaches.