著者

ITO Rui AOYAGI Toshinori HORI Naoto OH'IZUMI Mitsuo KAWASE Hiroaki DAIRAKU Koji SEINO Naoko SASAKI Hidetaka

出版者

Meteorological Society of Japan

雑誌

気象集誌. 第2輯 (ISSN:00261165)

巻号頁・発行日

pp.2018-053, (Released:2018-08-24)

被引用文献数

7

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Accurate simulation of urban snow accumulation/melting processes is important to provide reliable information about climate change in snowy urban areas. The Japan Meteorological Agency operates a square prism urban canopy (SPUC) model within their regional model to simulate urban atmosphere. However, presently, this model takes no account of snow processes. Therefore, in this study, we enhanced the SPUC by introducing a snowpack scheme, and the simulated snow over Japanese urban areas was assessed by comparing the snow depths from the enhanced SPUC and from a simple biosphere (iSiB) model with the observations. Snowpack schemes based on two approaches were implemented. The diagnostic approach (sSPUCdgn) uses empirical factors for snow temperature and melting/freezing amounts and the Penman equation for heat fluxes, whereas the prognostic approach (sSPUCprg) calculates snow temperatures using heat fluxes estimated from bulk equations. Both snowpack schemes enabled the model to accurately reproduce the seasonal variations and peaks in snow depth, but it is necessary to use sSPUCprg if we wish to consider the physical processes in the snow layer. Compared with iSiB, sSPUCprg resulted in a good performance for the seasonal variations in snow depth, and the error fell to 20 %. While iSiB overestimated the snow depth, a cold bias of over 1°C appeared in the daily mean temperature, which can be attributed to excessive decreases in the snow surface temperature. sSPUCprg reduces the bias by a different calculation method for the snow surface temperature and by the inclusion of heated building walls without snow; consequently, the simulated snow depth is improved. sSPUCprg generated a relationship between the seasonal variations in snowfall and snow depth close to the observed relationship, with the correlation coefficient getting large. Therefore, the simulation accuracy of snowfall becomes more crucial for simulating the surface snow processes precisely by the enhanced SPUC.

著者

KAWASE Hiroaki SASAI Takahiro YAMAZAKI Takeshi ITO Rui DAIRAKU Koji SUGIMOTO Shiori SASAKI Hidetaka MURATA Akihiko NOSAKA Masaya

出版者

Meteorological Society of Japan

雑誌

気象集誌. 第2輯 (ISSN:00261165)

巻号頁・発行日

pp.2018-022, (Released:2018-01-30)

被引用文献数

26

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Geographical distributions of heavy snowfall, especially in the Pacific Ocean side of Japan, have not been elucidated due to low occurrence frequency of heavy snowfall and limited number of snow observation points. This study investigates the characteristics of synoptic conditions for heavy daily snowfall from western to northeastern Japan in the present climate, analyzing high-resolution regional climate ensemble experiments with 5-km grid spacing. The Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55) and the 10-ensemble members of the database for Policy Decision making for Future climate change (d4PDF) historical experiments are applied to the lateral boundary conditions of the regional climate model. Dynamical downscaling using d4PDF (d4PDF-DS) enables us to evaluate much heavier snowfall events than those simulated by dynamical downscaling using JRA-55 (JRA55-DS). Over the Sea of Japan side, heavy snowfall occurs due to cold air outbreaks, while over the Pacific Ocean side, heavy snowfall is brought by extratropical cyclones passing along the Pacific Ocean coast. A comparison between JRA55-DS and d4PDF-DS indicates that heavier snowfall can occur due to more developed extratropical cyclones and enhanced cold air damming in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The geographical distributions of extremely heavy snowfall are different between two typical synoptic conditions, i.e., cold air outbreaks and extratropical cyclones. The difference is much clearer in the extremely heavy snowfall events than in all snowfall events. Heavy daily snowfall occurs in January and February on the Pacific Ocean side, in December and January on the Sea of Japan side, and in November and March in high mountainous areas. Saturated water vapor pressure is largest around 0 ℃ under the snowing conditions. Synoptic conditions from late fall to winter are closely related to preferable conditions for heavy snowfall over the mountainous areas where the surface air temperature is much less than 0 ℃ in the heavy snowfall events.