Snow Cover Reset Issue Between WRF Simulation Periods

W

wonseok ko

New member
Hello,
I have a question regarding the snow cover variable in WRF. I'm running the model for a 4-day period including spin-up time. During this period, it snowed on the first day, and snow cover persisted for the remaining three days. However, when I simulate the next 4-day period (also including spin-up), the initial snow cover is reset to zero in the input.
Is there a way to carry over the final snow cover fraction from the previous run so that it can be used as the initial snow cover for the next simulation?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!
 
Are you able to run the 2nd 4-day simulation using the restart capability of WRF? In this case snowc from the previous run will be kept.
 
Hello,

Thank you for the previous response regarding using the restart capability to retain SNOWC. I would like to follow up with a more specific question.

I want to initialize a new 4-day WRF simulation where only the snowc is taken from the restart file of the previous simulation, while all other variables (e.g., atmospheric and land surface variables) come from fresh input (e.g., new met_em or wrfinput files).

Is it possible to selectively use only snowc variables from the restart file when initializing a new simulation?
If so, what would be the best way to implement this?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards,
 
I am thinking that you can extract SNOWC from wrfrst file, then use its value to replace SNOWC in wrfinput, and run the case.

To replace variables in wrfinput, one capability you can use is:


Some other options like NCL and Python are also able to perform the same replacement.

Please try and let me know if you have further questions.
 
That's a practical solution. Snow cover continuity can make a noticeable difference in surface temperature and energy balance, so carrying SNOWC between simulations seems like a reasonable approach when appropriate. It's also a good reminder that many snow prediction methods depend heavily on how snow cover is initialized and updated. For anyone interested in how snow-related variables are combined with weather data to estimate snow-day potential, the methodology at How Our Snow Day Algorithm Works - SNOW-DAY.NET provides an interesting overview of the factors used in a snow day prediction algorithm.
 
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