Bias-adjusted projections of snow cover over eastern Canada using an ensemble of regional climate models

Abstract

In the context of climate change, stakeholders and decision makers need easily accessible bias-adjusted projections of snow cover and indices produced from those to develop adaptation plans. To meet this need, we produced an ensemble of statistically bias-adjusted regional climate projections of snow water equivalent (SWE) in the province of Québec, Canada. This bias adjustment required some fine-tuning to operational methods, mainly due to the seasonality in the SWE. We calculated indices of interest for several sectors based on the bias-adjusted SWE. These indices included the maximum of SWE as well as the duration, start, and end of the snow season, and the days without snow cover. In eastern Canada, snow cover tends to persist for shorter periods as the climate warms, with symmetrical shrinkage at the beginning and the end of the snow season, with the exception of the Nunavik region. The maximum SWE is projected to decrease in the southern part of the domain and increase elsewhere. The snow season in the Côte-Nord, southern Québec and St-Lawrence River Valley regions is increasingly interrupted by sequences of days without snow cover, whereas this is not the case for the northern and central Québec regions.