Observed climate change has already led to a wide range of impacts on environmental systems and society. In this context, many mountain regions seem to be particularly sensitive to a changing climate, through increases in temperature coupled with changes in precipitation regimes that are often larger than the global average (EEA, 2012). In mid-latitude mountains, these driving factors strongly ...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the differences in the long-term regimes of extreme precipitation and floods across the Alpine-Carpathian range using seasonality indices and atmospheric circulation patterns to understand the main flood-producing processes. This is supported by cluster analyses to identify areas of similar flood processes, both in terms of precipitation forcing and catchment...

Sea level rise related to the melting and thinning of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), a subject of growing concern in recent years, will eventually affect the global climate. Although the melting of snow on the GrIS is actively monitored by passive microwave remote sensing, very few studies have estimated the seasonal GrIS snow depth using this technique. In this study, to estimate seasonal sno...

The snow cover in lower mountain areas is often a very dynamic matter. For flood forecast, but also for continuous water balance modelling, a detailed knowledge of the snow cover, its temporal dynamics and current snow properties is essential. According to this, modelling of the snow cover is a constituent part of applied water balance models. To drive and calibrate the models, spatial measurem...

Keywords: Artificial intensification of melting; blackening of snow and ice; constructions from snow and ice; engineering-glaciology problems; freezing of water onto ice; utilization of icebergs Contents 1. Introduction 2. Engineering-glaciology problems 2.1. Mechanical principle of the effect 2.2. Thermal physical principle of the effects 3. Artificial intensification of melting of mountain gl...

This paper presents a physically based method for simulating the heat transfers between the different environmental elements to synthesize realistic winter sceneries. We simulate the snow fall over the ground, as well as the conductive, convective and radiative thermal transfers using a finite volume method according to the variations of air and dew point temperatures, the amount of snow, cloud...

Observations from several mountain ranges reveal that the height of the transition from snowfall to rainfall, the snow line, can intersect the terrain at an elevation hundreds of meters below its elevation in the free air upwind. This mesoscale lowering of the snow line affects both the accumulation of mountain snowpack and the generation of storm runoff. A unique multiyear view of this behavio...

A moving boundary problem, the so-called Stefan Problem, for the melting of ice is set up, then solved numerically using Matlab. Thereby curves for the position of the boundary between ice and water are produced. From these curves the melting time for a given layer thickness of ice/snow can be found. Furthermore, such curves are also presented when salt is added to the ice. It is seen that the ...

According to recent Studies, about 60 percent of surface waters and 57 Percent ground waters are located in snowy zones in Iran. In most areas of northern hemisphere and alpine environment areas, snow melt lead to the maximum instantaneous flow rate and is an important part of annual discharge. The present study investigated the effect of snowmelt on the surface waters and ground waters in B...

Snow melting bias in microwave mapping of Antarctic snow accumulation O. Magand, G. Picard, L. Brucker, M. Fily, and C. Genthon Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l’Environnement, CNRS, Université Joseph Fourier-Grenoble, 54 Rue Molière, BP 96, 38402 St Martin d’Hères Cedex, France Received: 13 February 2008 – Accepted: 4 March 2008 – Published: 24 April 2008 Correspondence to: G. Pic...