Arctic spring landscapes are usually characterized by a mosaic of coexisting snow-covered and bare ground patches. This phenomenon has major implications for hydrological processes, including meltwater production and runoff. Furthermore, as indicated by aircraft observations, it affects land-surface-atmosphere exchanges, leading to a high degree of variability in surface energy terms during melt. The heterogeneity and related differences when certain parts of the landscape become snow free also affects the length of the growing season and the carbon cycle.
Small-scale variability in arctic snowmelt is addressed here by combining a spatially distributed end-of-winter snow cover with simulations of variable snowmelt energy balance factors for the small arctic catchment of Trail Valley Creek (63 km 2 ). Throughout the winter, snow in arctic tundra basins is redistributed by frequent blowing snow events. Areas of above-or below-average end-of-winter snow water equivalents were determined from land-cover classifications, topography, land-cover-based snow surveys, and distributed surface wind-field simulations. Topographic influences on major snowmelt energy balance factors (solar radiation and turbulent fluxes of sensible and latent heat) were modelled on a small-scale (40 m) basis. A spatially variable complete snowmelt energy balance was subsequently computed and applied to the distributed snow cover, allowing the simulation of the progress of melt throughout the basin. The emerging patterns compared very well visually to snow cover observations from satellite images and aerial photographs.
Results show the relative importance of variable end-of-winter snow cover, spatially distributed melt energy fluxes, and local advection processes for the development of a patchy snow cover. This illustrates that the consideration of these processes is crucial for an accurate determination of snow-covered areas, as well as the location, timing, and amount of meltwater release from arctic catchments, and should, therefore, be included in hydrological models. Furthermore, the study shows the need for a subgrid parameterization of these factors in the land surface schemes of larger scale climate models.