Understanding the Role of Rain-On-Snow Events in High Latitude Climates: Soil Temperature and Ecosystem Impacts

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This project will explore the influences of wintertime rainfall-over-snow events on the snow cover itself and on soil properties that affect climate. Such rain-on-snow events create ice layers in the snow which impact land surface conditions and land surface-atmosphere interactions in the Arctic region. The research will be conducted using data from an array of meteorological stations combined with atmospheric model reanalysis, and is expected to advance our understanding of the climate systems in regions representing the typical hydrology and ecology of high northern latitudes. The model used for this project is a coupled atmosphere-land surface, single-column model derived from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate System Model (CCSM) and modified to capture the relevant physics. The output from global climate model scenarios are to be used to determine changes in the frequency of rain-on-snow events and other relevant meteorological conditions that impact the future of land-surface systems on climate and on ungulate (hoofed animal) populations.The results of this work are expected to improve modeling capabilities in Arctic land surface processes. The P.I.s will produce a report which they will distributed to the climate modeling community and specifically share with the land-surface working group of the NCAR CCSM. The work is also expected to benefit the Arctic native people since it includes the impact of rain-on-snow events on arctic ungulate herds.