EAR-PF Near-real time monitoring and prediction of snowpack drought over Sierra Nevada, California

劳里·胡宁博士获得了美国国家科学基金会地球科学博士后奖学金，将在加州大学欧文分校研究山区积雪干旱。美国西部地区，如加利福尼亚，很大程度上依赖山区的融雪来提供大部分水资源，加州的干旱并不罕见。尽管如此，将降雪信息纳入干旱监测框架在很大程度上仍未得到探索。预计该项目将促进对积雪占主导地位的山区干旱特征的了解，并提供对水的可用性和干旱持续的可能性的深入了解，这将对更广泛的社区有用。该项目旨在更好地了解雪水当量（SWE）作为一个关键的干旱指标，这对于依赖融雪水资源的地区实现水安全至关重要。PI将描述和诊断整个具有重要水文意义的内华达山脉的雪旱演变。物理和统计方法、遥感和再分析将用于解决与水文和气象过程和状态（例如SWE/降雪、流量、温度等）的时空变化有关的科学问题。这些努力将朝着改善干旱监测系统和指标、近期预报和长期气候分析的方向发展，在山区，雪是重要的。该项目将生成高分辨率、近实时的积雪地图，以描述积雪不足、干旱严重程度和水储存情况，可用于水资源管理和减轻环境危害。将分布的雪信息纳入干旱监测系统将进一步增进对雪水文学、山地气象学、水文极端现象和气候学有关过程的认识。

Dr. Laurie Huning has been awarded an NSF Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at the University of California, Irvine investigating snowpack droughts across mountainous terrain. Regions in the western United States such as California greatly rely on snowmelt from mountainous regions for a significant fraction of their water resources and drought in California is not uncommon. Nonetheless, the incorporation of snow information into drought monitoring frameworks remains largely unexplored. It is expected that the project will advance the knowledge of drought characteristics across snow-dominated mountainous terrain and provide insight into water availability and the probability of drought persistence that would be useful to the broader community.The project aims to develop a better understanding of snow water equivalent (SWE) as a critical drought indicator, which is important for achieving water security in regions that depend on snowmelt-derived water resources. The PI will characterize and diagnose the evolution of snow droughts across the hydrologically-significant Sierra Nevada. Physical and statistical methods, remote sensing, and reanalyses will be used to address science questions related to the spatial and temporal variability of hydrological and meteorological processes and states (e.g. SWE/snowfall, streamflow, temperature, etc.). Such efforts will move toward improved drought monitoring systems and metrics, near-term forecasts, and long-term climate analysis in mountainous regions where snow is important. This project will generate high-resolution, near-real time maps of the snowpack to characterize snowpack deficits, drought severity, and water storage that can be used for water resources management and environmental hazard mitigation. The incorporation of distributed snow information into a drought monitoring system will further the knowledge of processes related to snow hydrology, mountain meteorology, and hydrologic extremes and climatology.