Snow Accumulation and Ablation Model - Snow-17

This model is the GoldSim implementation of the SNOW-17 conceptual model developed by the National Weather Service River Forecast System (NWSRFS). A link to the document written by Eric Anderson is included in this model. It is highly recommended that you read this before using this model (Anderson, 2006).

This model uses average daily temperature as the index to determine the energy exchange within the snow-air interface within the watershed being modeled. The only other model input required is precipitation but there are some other coefficients used for calibration (see the Input_Data Container). The model can be used to help forecast snow melt once proper adjustments have been made to calibration parameters.

The main processes included in this model are the dividing of precipitation into rain/snow, accumulation of snow pack, energy exchange on the snow-air interface, heat deficit in the snowpack, ground melt, and finally outflow from the snowpack into the catchment in which it resides.

Note: This model does not calculate attenuation and routing of water flows from the area. Also, this model is only intended for daily time steps.

If you run a Sensitivity Analysis using GoldSim on this model, you will find out how much impact the input parameters have on the peak snow water equivelent (SWE). The chart below shows a tornado chart, which is a type of sensitivity analysis that provides a graphical representation of the degree to which the Result is sensitive to the specified Independent Variables. This is useful for calibration because you can focus on the parameters that have the most impact on the result of interest.

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