Where Snow and Forest Meet: A Global Atlas
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Date
2025-05-28
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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Abstract
The complex interactions between snow cover and forests have implications for ecosystems, water resources and the Earth's climate. However, the geographic distribution of where snow and forest overlap remains poorly known. Here, we evaluate the importance of snowfall over forested environments and its spatial variability at the global scale and a 0.1° spatial resolution, leveraging an existing climatological reanalysis and a satellite tree cover map. We find that 23% of the land mass (30.5·10$^6$ km$^2$) experiences snowfall in forested areas, mostly in the boreal forest (15.8·10$^6$ km$^2$) and elsewhere in mountains (4.9·10$^6$ km$^2$). There, the solid fraction of precipitation in forest is greater than the median value of 11.1% over 15.3·10$^6$ km$^2$, reaches 64% locally, and 23% when aggregated over hydrological basins larger than 10$^5$ km$^2$.
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published
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Journal / series
Volume
52 (10)
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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Subject
seasonal snow; forest; cryosphere; global atlas
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Notes
Funding
225378 - Latest snow modelling approaches for improved mass balance estimates of Swiss glaciers (SNF)