Non-Melting Phenomena of Snowflakes Observed in Subsaturated Air below Freezing Level

Matsuo, Takayo; Sasyo, Yoshio

doi:10.2151/jmsj1965.59.1_26

Cited by 40 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Often snowfall is not reported (missing) on days when no (zero) snowfall was observed. To avoid these occurrences contributing to the data criterion above, missing snowfall was set to zero on days with minimum temperature > 4.4 °C (Matsuo and Sasyo, 1981) and days when the reported precipitation was zero.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An East Coast winter storm precipitation climatology

Frankoski

DeGaetano

2011

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Using a previously compiled climatology of East Coast winter storms (ECWS), an ECWS precipitation climatology was developed for the eastern United States from 1951-1952 to 2005-2006, using an automated procedure. Non-ECWS precipitation that may have occurred during ECWS events was excluded through the development of a decision process based on knowledge of the characteristics of extratropical storms and aided by ECWS case study analyses. The main components used by this decision process were the location of precipitation and pressure gradients, and the presence of additional cyclones, not meeting the ECWS criteria. A sensitivity analysis of the ECWS precipitation climatology was conducted, which considered the change in the climatology if non-ECWS precipitation was not excluded by the decision process. The highest average percentages of snowfall from ECWS occur in the Middle Atlantic and southern New England regions. These heavily populated metropolitan areas typically receive 45% of snowfall from ECWS. The highest average percentages of annual precipitation from ECWS are generally 20-25% and are located along the East Coast from Virginia northward to Maine. For the metropolitan centres of the Northeast, and for northern New England, El Niño years seem to indicate above average precipitation and snowfall amounts from ECWS, as well as an above average overall percentage of precipitation and snowfall from ECWS.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An East Coast winter storm precipitation climatology

Frankoski

DeGaetano

2011

Intl Journal of Climatology

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“…where T and f, respectively, denote air temperature (°C) and relative humidity (%), T r = 4, T s = 0, f r = 46 7.2 − T √ and f s = −7.5T + 93 (Matsuo and Sasyo, 1981). The fraction of the solid phase in precipitation is then 1 − w. This discrimination method for solid and liquid precipitation is widely used by meteorologists (e.g.…”

Section: Snowpack Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response of snowpack to +2°C global warming in Hokkaido, Japan

2019

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The response of snowpack to a +2°C global warming relative to the present climate was estimated in Hokkaido, Japan, using a physical snowpack model driven by dynamically downscaled (DDS) data, after model evaluation. The evaluation revealed that the snowpack model successfully reproduced the height of snow cover (HS), snow water equivalent (SWE) and snow-covered days (SCDs), but had a moderate bias in the thickness ratios of melt form (MF) and hoar category (HC). The DDS-forced simulation predicted that the seasonal-maximum HS and SWE would decrease by 30–40% in the southwestern and eastern parts of Hokkaido due to a large decrease in snowfall during the accumulation period, and that the HS and SWE in the north would decrease, albeit not significantly due to uncertain atmospheric forcing. The number of SCDs in Hokkaido was predicted to decline by ~30 d. Additionally, ~50% of snowpack thickness during a season would be MF in most areas, whereas HC would be <50% all over Hokkaido.

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“…Most notably, the observed precipitation type is influenced by latent heat (Unterstrasser and Zaengl 2006), thermal and moisture distributions, vertical atmospheric motion, and ice nuclei distributions (Bourgouin 2000). Relative humidity has been shown to highly impact the precipitation phase near the freezing point; Matsuo and Sasyo (1981) demonstrated snowfall with temperatures up to 48C when the air was relatively unsaturated. In general, the energy necessary for phase transformation (i.e., melting and evaporation) extracts latent heat from the atmosphere with limits depending on the relative humidity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Snowfall Limit Forecasts and Hydrological Modeling

Tobin

Rinaldo

Schaefli

2012

Journal of Hydrometeorology

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Hydrological flood forecasting in mountainous areas requires accurate partitioning between rain and snowfall to properly estimate the extent of runoff contributing areas. Here a method to make use of snowfall limit information-a standard output of limited-area models (LAMs)-for catchment-scale hydrological modeling is proposed. LAMs consider the vertical, humid, atmospheric structure in their snowfall limit calculations. The proposed approach is thus more physically based than inferring snowfall limit estimates based on (dry) ground temperature measurements, which is the standard procedure in most hydrological models. The presented case study uses forecast reanalyses from the Consortium for Small-Scale Modeling (COSMO) limited-area model as input for discharge simulation in a topographically complex catchment in the Swiss Alps. Results suggest that the use of COSMO snowfall limits during spring snowmelt periods can provide more accurate runoff simulations than routine procedures, with practical implications for operational hydrology in Alpine regions.

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Non-Melting Phenomena of Snowflakes Observed in Subsaturated Air below Freezing Level

Cited by 40 publications

References 1 publication

An East Coast winter storm precipitation climatology

An East Coast winter storm precipitation climatology

Response of snowpack to +2°C global warming in Hokkaido, Japan

Snowfall Limit Forecasts and Hydrological Modeling

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