Snow properties at the forest–tundra ecotone: predominance of water vapor fluxes even in deep, moderately cold snowpacks

Lackner, Georg; Domine, Florent; Nadeau, Daniel F.; Lafaysse, Matthieu; Dumont, Marie

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-3357-2022

Articles | Volume 16, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-3357-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-3357-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 8

Research article

|

25 Aug 2022

Research article |

| 25 Aug 2022

Snow properties at the forest–tundra ecotone: predominance of water vapor fluxes even in deep, moderately cold snowpacks

Georg Lackner, Florent Domine, Daniel F. Nadeau, Matthieu Lafaysse, and Marie Dumont

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-3357-2022-supplement

Data sets

Hydrometeorological, snow and soil data from a low-Arctic valley in the forest-tundra ecotone in Northern Quebec. Lackner, Georg; Domine, Florent; Sarrazin, Denis; Nadeau, Daniel; Belke-Brea, Maria https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.946538

Short summary

We compared the snowpack at two sites separated by less than 1 km, one in shrub tundra and the other one within the boreal forest. Even though the snowpack was twice as thick at the forested site, we found evidence that the vertical transport of water vapor from the bottom of the snowpack to its surface was important at both sites. The snow model Crocus simulates no water vapor fluxes and consequently failed to correctly simulate the observed density profiles.