Date of Award

1-1-2017

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences

Content Description

1 online resource (ii, xv, 151 pages) : illustrations (some color), color maps.

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Justin Minder

Committee Members

Brian Rose, Aiguo Dai, Craig Ferguson, Roy Rasmussen

Keywords

Climate Change, Mesoscale circulations, Mountain Breeze, Mountain Weather, Snow Albedo Feedback, Albedo, Climatic changes, Snow, Global warming

Subject Categories

Atmospheric Sciences

Abstract

As the climate warms, the snow albedo feedback (SAF) will play a substantial role in shaping the climate response of mid-latitude mountain regions with transient snow cover. One such region is the Rocky Mountains of the western United States where large snow packs accumulate during the winter and persist throughout the spring. In this dissertation, the Weather Research and Forecast model (WRF) configured as a regional climate model is used to investigate the role of the SAF in determining the regional climate response to forced anthropogenic climate change. The regional effects of climate change are investigated by using the pseudo global warming (PGW) framework, which is an experimental configuration in a which a mean climate perturbation is added to the boundary forcing of a regional model, thus preserving the large-scale circulation entering the region through the model boundaries and isolating the mesoscale climate response. Using this framework, the impact of the SAF on the regional energetics and atmospheric dynamics is examined and quantified. Linear feedback analysis is used to quantify the strength of the SAF over the Headwaters region of the Colorado Rockies for a series of high-resolution PGW experiments. This technique is used to test sensitivity of the feedback strength to model resolution and land surface model. Over the Colorado Rockies, and integrated over the entire spring season, the SAF strength is largely insensitive to model resolution, however there are more substantial differences on the sub-seasonal (monthly) timescale. In contrast, the SAF strength over this region is very sensitive to choice of land surface model.

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