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Wisconsin Snowfall Projections

Collaborators: David Lorenz, Dan Vimont, Steve Vavrus, Chris Kucharik, Kristie Franz

Funding: Wisconsin Focus on Energy, UW-Madison Nelson Institute

Publications:
Notaro, M., D. Lorenz, D. Vimont, S. Vavrus, C. Kucharik, and K. Franz, 2010: 21st century Wisconsin snow
projections based on an operational snow model driven by statistically downscaled climate data. International
Journal of Climatology, DOI: 10.1002/joc.2179.

Methods: High-resolution projections of daily maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation are produced for Wisconsin using statistical downscaling of IPCC AR4 output. This downscaled climate data is used to force the NWS SNOW-17 operational snow model to produce 21st century projections of snowfall, snow depth, and snow cover for Wisconsin.

Key finding: Future warming is likely to outweigh the effects of an increase in precipitation, resulting in substantial reductions in Wisconsin snowfall later this century.

Dramatic reductions in snowfall, snow depth, and snow cover fraction are projected for Wisconsin, using WICCI downscaled climate data for the mid- and late-21st century to force the NWS SNOW-17 operational snow model.