{"id":771,"date":"2020-05-27T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T05:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimafoundation.org\/2020\/06\/03\/from-snowpack-to-high-altitude-rainfall-estimates\/"},"modified":"2022-09-29T08:19:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T08:19:53","slug":"from-snowpack-to-high-altitude-rainfall-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/news\/from-snowpack-to-high-altitude-rainfall-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"From snowpack to high altitude rainfall estimates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Among the presentations at EGU 2020, that of researchers in the field of Hydrology and Hydraulics described a procedure for the estimation of precipitation at high altitudes, data that is fundamental for the management of water resources in mountain areas and beyond<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Snow, which on our mountains began to melt between April and May, is not only good for winter sports: it also represents a fundamental water resource on a national scale. It is for this reason that it is important to have precise estimates of how much snow has fallen during the winter. However, collecting data at high altitudes is not easy. To overcome this problem, researchers in our\u00a0Hydrology and Hydraulics Department<\/a>, in collaboration with the\u00a0Functional Centre of the Autonomous Region of Valle d\u2019Aosta<\/a>, the\u00a0Aosta Valley Water Company<\/a>\u00a0(CVA) and\u00a0Arpa Valle d\u2019Aosta<\/a>, the regional Environment Protection Agency, have developed a system to calculate how much snow is present at high elevations based on measurements of precipitation in the valley. Their\u00a0results<\/a>\u00a0are among the presentations brought to the EGU General Assembly 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

High altitude\ndata, the challenge of measurements<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Mountains are often referred to\nas water towers, the water reservoirs of Europe and the world in general. Snow\nthat accumulates there during winter stores a large amount of water. Melting as\ntemperatures rise, this water reaches the valley when, from April to May, there\nis a significant demand from the ecosystem and our society. Knowing how much\nsnow is present, therefore, becomes fundamental for both short and long-term\nforecasts (e.g. flood forecasts) to plan the management of the water resource\nduring the year. There is a problem, however: making accurate measurements at\nhigh altitudes is difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt high altitudes instruments\ntend to work less well, so data are often scarce and biased<\/strong>,\nespecially when the precipitation is represented by snow instead of rain\u201d,\nexplains Francesco Avanzi, researcher in Hydrology and Hydraulics at CIMA\nResearch Foundation. \u201cWe have therefore improved our forecasting tools at very\nhigh altitudes, especially upstream of hydroelectric reservoirs. To do so, we focused\non the amount of accumulated snow at the end of the winter season, a dataset\nthat is rarely considered\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A proportion between the top and the bottom of the\nmountain<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Every year, when snow stops\naccumulating and is about to start melting, Arpa Valle d\u2019Aosta takes\nmeasurements on site to determine how much snow is present across the\nheadwaters. This information was used by the researchers to compare it with the\ndata collected downstream and to establish a proportion between precipitation at high\naltitudes, above 3000 meters, and that recorded downstream<\/strong>. \u201cIn other\nwords, we thought that this data, put in relation with the measurements made\ndownstream, could give us precise estimates of precipitation during the entire\nwinter season\u201d, continues Avanzi. \u201cAnd the relationship has been included in a\nsnow forecasting model developed by CIMA Research Foundation, S3M\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results of the model, based\non over 70,000 measurements collected in Valle d\u2019Aosta, were then validated by back\nchecking the data collected from 2017 onwards. \u201cWe have thus been able to\nverify that, by providing the model with these improved estimates of\nprecipitation and therefore of snow amount, both snow estimates (i.e. how much\nsnow is present on the ground) and water supply estimates<\/strong> improve\u201d.\nSnow estimates in operational hydrology are generally expressed in terms of\nSnow Water Equivalent, which is the amount of water stored by snow at a given\npoint and therefore the amount of water that this given point would provide if\nall the snow melted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are now going through the\nprocess of making this system operational as early as next winter. This study\nhas enabled us to establish that the data collected in the form of\nhigh-altitude snow cover is very useful\u201d, concludes the researcher. \u201cAnd by\nproviding them to the S3M forecasting model we can get much more accurate\nestimates of Snow Water Equivalent, a variable in which many operational\nservices such as ARPA or hydropower companies are interested. Our approach is a\nsimple and very promising one for estimating this parameter\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the presentations at EGU 2020, that of researchers in the field of Hydrology and Hydraulics described a procedure for the estimation of precipitation at high altitudes, data that is fundamental for the management of water resources in mountain areas and beyond Snow, which on our mountains began to melt between April and May, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,124],"tags":[82],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-hydrology-and-hydraulics","tag-water"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}