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High latitude drainage basins are experiencing higher average temperatures, earlier snowmelt onset in spring, and an increase in rain on snow (ROS) events in winter, trends that climate models project into the future. Snowmelt-dominated basins are most sensitive to winter temperature increases that influence the frequency of ROS events and the timing and duration of snowmelt, resulting in changes to spring runoff. Of specific interest in this study are early melt events that occur in late winter preceding melt onset in the spring. The study focuses on satellite determination and characterization of these early melt events using the Yukon River Basin (Canada/USA) as a test domain. The timing of these events was estimated...
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Snowmelt runoff in high latitudes has significant impacts on global climatic and hydrologic systems. Snowmelt timing and snow water equivalent (SWE) from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) are inputs to the new flux-based SWEHydro model to simulate the spring streamflow without meteorological data for high-latitude, snow-dominated drainages. The model was developed for the Ross River (7250 km2) and tested on the Pelly River (49,000 km2), nested tributaries to the Yukon River. The model uses four parameters: snowmelt rate during and after the melt transition (as defined by passive microwave observations), and flow timing during and after the melt transition. A normalized mismatch function...
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