Combined influence of maximum accumulation and melt rates on the duration of the seasonal snowpack over temperate mountains

The duration of the seasonal snowpack determines numerous aspects of the water cycle, ecology and the economy in cold and mountainous regions, and is a balance between the magnitude of accumulated snow and the rate of melt. The contribution of each component has not been well quantified under contrasting topography and climatological conditions although this may provide useful insights into how snow cover duration could respond to climate change. Here, we examined the contribution of the annual peak snow water equivalent (SWE) and the seasonal melt rate to define the duration of the snowpack over temperate mountains, using snow data for mountain areas with different climatological characteristics across the Iberian Peninsula. We used a daily snowpack database for the period 1980–2014 over Iberia to derive the seasonal peak SWE, melt rate and season snow cover duration. The influence of peak SWE and melt rates on seasonal snow cover duration was estimated using a stepwise linear model approach. The stepwise linear models showed high R-adjusted values (average R-adjusted = 0.7), without any clear dependence on the elevation or geographical location. In general, the peak SWE influenced the snow cover duration over all of the mountain areas analysed to a greater extent than the melt rates (89.1%, 89.2%, 81.6% 93.2% and 95.5% in the areas for the Cantabrian, Central, Iberian, Pyrenees and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, respectively). At these colder sites, the melt season occurs mostly in the spring and tends to occur very fast. In contrast, the areas where the melt rates dominated snow cover duration were located systematically at lower elevations, due to the high interannual variability in the occurrence of annual peak SWE (in winter or early spring), yielding highly variable melt rates. However, in colder sites the melt season occurs mostly in spring and it is very fast in most of the years. The results highlight the control that the seasonal precipitation patterns, in combination with temperature, exert on the seasonal snow cover duration by influencing the peak SWE and suggest a future increased importance of melt rates as temperatures increase. Despite the high climatological variability of the Iberian mountain ranges, the results showed a consistent behaviour along the different mountain ranges, indicating that the methods and results may be transferrable to other temperate mountain areas of the world.