Avalanche forecasting in a heavy snowfall area using the snowpack model

Abstract

We describe the use of a snow cover model-SNOWPACK-for a heavy snowfall area. The area along the Sea of Japan received record-breaking snowfall in the winter of 2005/2006. Avalanche forecasting was carried out at Tunan, Niigata prefecture where snow exceeded 4m. Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (AMEDAS) was used as the model input data. To verify the model output, snow pit observations were carried out in 10-day intervals. The snow profiles simulated using the SNOWPACK model agreed fairly well with the observed profiles. However, the equations for the stability index (SI) were not suitable for the study area considered. The empirical equations formulated by Yamanoi and Endo (2002) were most suitable for this region for simulating SI; therefore, they were incorporated into the SNOWPACK model. To expand the forecasting area to include the area around route 405, a national road, the distributions of meteorological parameters in the study area were estimated for grid points with 10-m spacing. One of the avalanches caused a disaster in which a car was pushed away from the road into a valley on 24 th December. The snow depth increased by about 70cm within 24 hours; this caused a large load before densification. Thus, snow stability decreased. This was reproduced by the SNOWPACK model. Further, the stability index maps showed that most of slopes were dangerous on that day.

Early warning of snow-caused disasters in pastoral areas on the Tibetan Plateau

“…Many studies have been conducted on snow cover area monitoring (Gutzler and Rosen, 1992;Hall et al, 2001;Liang et al, 2008b;Wang and Xie, 2009;Gao et al, 2010;Paudel et al, 2011), snow depth (SD) simulation (Stowe et al, 1991;Chang et al, 1996;Frei et al, 2012;Yu et al, 2012), snow disaster risk assessment (Romanov et al, 2002), loss evaluation post-disaster (i.e., the research for the pastoral areas after snow disasters have occurred and have resulted in losses of livestock) (Nakamura and Shindo, 2001), snow disaster and avalanche mapping, as well as their relations to climate change (Jones and Jamieson, 2001;Hendrikx et al, 2005;Bocchiola et al, 2008;Delparte et al, 2008;Hirashima et al, 2008;Lato et al, 2012). In 2006, the Chinese government issued a national standard for grading snow disasters in pastoral area (GB/T 20482-2006) (General Administration of Quality Supervision of China, 2006).…”

Simulations of Monthly Variation in Snowfall over Complicated Mountainous Areas around Japan's Northern Alps

“…More sophisticated snow models, such as SNOW-PACK (e.g., Bartelt and Lehning, 2002;Hirashima et al 2008), would be needed to accurately simulate the snow accumulation, metamorphosis, and melting processes based on the meteorological data simulated in the WRF model. It would be necessary to simulate snow depth for more than 10 years to more accurately discuss the interannual variation of snow cover.…”

White water: Fifty years of snow research in WRR and the outlook for the future

“…Another venerable distributed model is CROCUS, used in France and elsewhere for avalanche forecasting as well as climate studies [Brun et al, 1989;Strasser et al, 2002;Vionnet et al, 2012]. A third model that has a wide user base is SNOWPACK [Bartelt and Lehning, 2002;Lehning et al, 2002aLehning et al, , 2002bHirashima et al, 2008], and there are many others.…”