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SnowModel Output (Mount Mansfield)


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Created: Apr 28, 2025 at 3:08 p.m. (UTC)
Last updated: Sep 06, 2026 at 3:55 p.m. (UTC)
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Content types: Multidimensional Content 
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Abstract

The mountains of the northeastern United States exist in a temperate, humid climate in which snowmelt dynamics remain understudied. This study evaluates spatiotemporal snowpack variability under a changing climate using a distributed, physics-based snowpack model. Here, we ran SnowModel for a montane setting surrounding Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak (1340 m). During winter precipitation events, air temperatures are often near 0°C, causing snow accumulation and melt to be highly sensitive to model parameterizations, elevation, and shifting temperatures. Tests of various model formulations showed that a wet bulb temperature threshold for precipitation phase partitioning and gravity-dominated liquid water percolation reduced model error most effectively in this unique snowpack and climate. Using the optimized model framework, the average percent bias of snow depth and snow water equivalent (SWE) improved by 33% and 75%, respectively. We also assessed the effects of changing weather patterns, simulated by perturbations in temperature and precipitation model forcings. We show middle elevations (700-900 m) to be the most sensitive to these changes, with over a 70% mean decrease in SWE in the lowest temperature increase scenario. Incremental changes in temperature caused increased midwinter melt, including the emergence of new high-runoff snowmelt pulses such as one event, where a +3.3°C increase in temperature resulted in a spike of 40 mm of surface water input from the snowpack at mid-elevations. An improved knowledge of the complexity of regional snowpack heterogeneity and snowmelt dynamics is critical for understanding flood forecasting, hydrologic management, winter recreation, and ecosystem health under a changing climate.

Subject Keywords

Coverage

Spatial

Coordinate System/Geographic Projection:
WGS 84 EPSG:4326
Coordinate Units:
Decimal degrees
Place/Area Name:
Mount Mansfield Region
North Latitude
44.5646°
East Longitude
-72.7229°
South Latitude
44.4858°
West Longitude
-72.8637°

Temporal

Start Date:
End Date:

Content

Data Services

The following web services are available for data contained in this resource. Geospatial Feature and Raster data are made available via Open Geospatial Consortium Web Services. The provided links can be copied and pasted into GIS software to access these data. Multidimensional NetCDF data are made available via a THREDDS Data Server using remote data access protocols such as OPeNDAP. Other data services may be made available in the future to support additional data types.

Credits

Funding Agencies

This resource was created using funding from the following sources:
Agency Name Award Title Award Number
Cold Regions Research Engineering Lab None W913E522C0003
United States Geological Survey Water Mission Area Snow Hydrology Research Project None

How to Cite

Grunes, A., Bomblies, A., Wemple, B. (2026). SnowModel Output (Mount Mansfield), HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/adf8f37662534d2d9627cd59783fd686

This resource is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
CC-BY

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