Glacier mass balance simulation using SWAT distributed snow algorithm

Application of a temperature-index melt model incorporated into the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is presented to simulate mass balance (MB) and equilibrium line altitude (ELA) of three glaciers. The snow accumulation/melt parameters were adjusted to glacierized and free glacier areas, respe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Hydrological sciences journal 2017-03, Vol.62 (4), p.546-560
Main Authors: Omani, Nina, Srinivasan, Raghavan, Smith, Patricia K., Karthikeyan, Raghupathy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Glacier
hydrology
mass balance
Simulation
Snow
SWAT
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Application of a temperature-index melt model incorporated into the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is presented to simulate mass balance (MB) and equilibrium line altitude (ELA) of three glaciers. The snow accumulation/melt parameters were adjusted to glacierized and free glacier areas, respectively. The SWAT snow algorithm enabled us to consider spatial variation of snow parameters by elevation bands across the sub-basins, while in the previous studies using SWAT, the related parameters were constant for an entire basin. The results show slight improvement in runoff simulation and significant improvement in simulated MB when considering ELA in model calibration. The results showed that SWAT can be applied to simulate MB, vertical MB distribution and annual ELA, with light calibration efforts for data-scarce catchments. The accuracy of the results depends on the modelled area of ablation zone from which most of the meltwater is released.
ISSN:0262-6667
2150-3435
DOI:10.1080/02626667.2016.1162907