Changes in March mean snow water equivalent since the mid-20th century and the contributing factors in reanalyses and CMIP6 climate models

Räisänen, Jouni

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-1913-2023

Articles | Volume 17, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-1913-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-1913-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 5

Research article

|

09 May 2023

Research article |

| 09 May 2023

Changes in March mean snow water equivalent since the mid-20th century and the contributing factors in reanalyses and CMIP6 climate models

Jouni Räisänen

Data sets

Data and GrADS scripts for “Changes in March mean snow water equivalent since the mid-twentieth century and the contributing factors in reanalyses and CMIP6 climate models”, submitted to The Cryosphere Jouni Räisänen https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7707302

CMIP6 search interface Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/

Short summary

Changes in snow amount since the mid-20th century are studied, focusing on the mechanisms that have changed the water equivalent of the snowpack (SWE). Both reanalysis and climate model data show a decrease in SWE in most of the Northern Hemisphere. The total winter precipitation has increased in most areas, but this has been compensated for by reduced snowfall-to-precipitation ratio and enhanced snowmelt. However, the details and magnitude of these trends vary between different data sets.