TC The Cryosphere TC The Cryosphere 1994-0424 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/tc-7-1017-2013 A regional climate model hindcast for Siberia: analysis of snow water equivalent Klehmet K. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1503-2908 1 Geyer B. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8017-3136 1 Rockel B. 1 Institute of Coastal Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Geesthacht, Germany 01 07 2013 7 4 1017 1034 Copyright: © 2013 K. Klehmet et al. 2013 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/7/1017/2013/tc-7-1017-2013.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/7/1017/2013/tc-7-1017-2013.pdf

This study analyzes the added value of a regional climate model hindcast with respect to snow water equivalent (SWE) for Siberia when compared to SWE estimates from forcing NCEP-R. In addition, we examine the discrepancies of simulated SWE to several recent reanalysis products (NCEP-R2 NCEP-CFSR, ERA-Interim). We apply the regional climate model COSMO-CLM (CCLM) to a 50 km grid spacing using NCEP-R1 as driving force to obtain a 63 yr (1948 to 2010) gridded dataset of historical SWE. Simulated regional climate data is necessary because of the absence of station data in that region. To perform large-scale assessments we use the satellite-derived daily SWE product of ESA DUE GlobSnow from 1987 to 2010. Russian station SWE data is used for cross-checking the findings. In January (mid-winter), the SWE hindcast is in good agreement with GlobSnow, whereas it overestimates SWE during the melting season. CCLM shows a clear added value in providing realistic SWE information compared to the driving reanalysis. The temporal consistency of CCLM is higher than that presented by ERA-Interim and NCEP-R2.

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