Changes in Snow Storage in the Upper Hron River Basin (Slovakia)

Abstract

An evaluation of changes in the snow cover in mountainous basins in Slovakia and a validation of MODIS satellite images are provided in this paper. An analysis of the changes in snow cover was given by evaluating changes in the snow depth, the duration of the snow cover, and the simulated snow water equivalent in a daily time step using a conceptual hydrological rainfall-runoff model with lumped parameters. These values were compared with the available measured data at climate stations. The changes in the snow cover and the simulated snow water equivalent were estimated by trend analysis; its significance was tested using the Mann-Kendall test. Also, the satellite images were compared with the available measured data. From the results, it is possible to see a decrease in the snow depth and the snow water equivalent from 1961-2010 in all the months of the winter season, and significant decreasing trends were indicated in the months of December, January and February

Experimental measurements for improved understanding and simulation of snowmelt events in the Western Tatra Mountains

“…Although floods caused solely by melting snow are not very frequent, rain on snow events are very often causes of large floods (Merz and Blöschl, 2003;Pekárová and Halmová, 2009). Improved knowledge on spatial variability of snow accumulation and melt transferred into better models may thus help with operational flood forecasting (Nester et al, 2012;Weingartner et al 2003), reservoir management (Blöschl and Kirnbauer, 1991;DeWalle and Rango, 2008) or estimation of runoff changes in mountain areas caused by climate change impacts (Hlavčová et al, 2015;Kotríková et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2015).…”