The development and validation of a simple snow model for the GISS GCM

Abstract

Five years of meteorological and hydrological data from a typical New England watershed where winter snow cover is significant were used to drive and validate two off-line land surface schemes suitable for use in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies GCM: a baseline scheme that does not model the physics of a snowpack and therefore, neglects the insulating properties of snow cover; and a modified scheme in which a three-layer snowpack is modeled. With the inclusion of a simple three-layer snow model into the baseline model, not only are the ground and surface radiation temperatures adequately modeled but all the features of snowpack ripening that characterize pack growth/ablation are simulated. -from Author