Preparing NASA for Future Snow Missions: Incorporation of the Spatially Explicit SnowModel in LIS

Objectives and benefits: Snow is a critical component of the natural earth system and it has significant socio-economic effects. Snow provides a natural reservoir for water resources that billions of people rely on; it is a key link between the global energy and water cycles; it plays a major role in both plant and animal habitats; it has the power to shut down economic activity; and yet it also provides the foundation for a massive recreation industry. While the importance of snow is often considered on regional to global scales, one of the most important horizontal length scales for snow processes can only be represented with model grid spacings of 100 meters or less. The snow science community has made great advances in understanding and representing these critical scales in small scale snow models; however, the software infrastructure does not yet exist to perform such fine spatial resolution simulations on continental scales. This presents a significant constraint on NASA when planning and operating future snow science missions. The snow community has determined that the optimal future snow product must combine modeling with remote sensing, and to achieve this it must be possible to perform simulations on approximately a 100-meter grid while representing the processes that operate on that scale, e.g. preferential deposition, snow redistribution, enhanced radiation load. The goal of this proposed project is to improve NASA's capability to plan and operate a future snow mission by coupling an advanced snow modeling system (SnowModel) into NASA's Land Information System Framework (NASA-LISF). This work will provide the tools necessary to plan and operate a more cost-effective snow mission, yielding better snow products for the research and applications communities. Proposed work and approach: We propose to increase the readiness of NASA's snow modeling capability by extending the LISF to include an explicit representation of spatial variability (LISF-SnowModel). The specific work elements in the proposal are: (1) Incorporate and enhance fine scale wind field and precipitation modifications from SnowModel's MicroMet tool into the NASA-LISF forcing engine. (2) Couple SnowModel's snowpack and snow redistribution components into LISF and the Noah-MP land surface model in LISF. (3) Improve the computational infrastructure supporting LISF-SnowModel to provide parallel performance sufficient to run continental domain simulations at snowdrift resolving scales (100-m). This includes coupling snow transport processes represented in SnowModel with the MPI communications in LISF. (4) Perform a mission trade-off analysis based on high-resolution continental scale SnowModel simulations within LISF-SnowModel. Period of performance: December 1st 2019 – November 30th 2021. Technical Readiness Level Advancement: Entry TRL: 2; Exit TRL: 5. More »