Melón-Nava (2025) Patterns of snow cover distribution in the Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain)

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Buleria (Universidad de León)
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-11-21
• Authors: Adrián Melón-Nava
• DOI: None

Research Groups

• CNRM (Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques): Météo-France and CNRS (UMR 3589), Toulouse, France.
• SCHAPI (Service Central d'Hydrométéorologie et d'Appui à la Prévision des Inondations): Toulouse, France.
• UFZ (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research): Leipzig, Germany (collaborating on the mHM model).

Short Summary

The study evaluates the performance of the ISBA land surface model and the mHM hydrological model across metropolitan France to improve the national hydrometeorological reanalysis. It demonstrates that while mHM excels in river discharge simulation due to its multiscale parameterization, ISBA provides a more comprehensive representation of surface energy fluxes.

Objective

• To compare the ability of a physically-based Land Surface Model (ISBA) and a conceptual-physical Hydrological Model (mHM) to simulate the water cycle at a national scale.
• To identify the impact of spatial resolution and parameter regionalization on the accuracy of streamflow and soil moisture simulations.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Metropolitan France (approx. 550,000 km²) at grid resolutions of 8 km and 1 km.
• Temporal Scale: Long-term simulations covering the period 1958–2018 (multi-decadal), with evaluation focused on daily and hourly time steps.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: ISBA (Interactions between Soil, Biosphere, and Atmosphere) within the SURFEX platform, and mHM (multiscale Hydrological Model).
• Data sources: SAFRAN atmospheric reanalysis (precipitation, temperature, etc.), SIM (SAFRAN-ISBA-MODCOU) database, and observed river discharge data from the French National Hydrographic Bank (Banque Hydro) for approximately 600 gauging stations. Satellite-derived soil moisture products (e.g., ESA CCI) were used for validation.

Main Results

• Discharge Performance: mHM significantly outperformed ISBA in streamflow simulation, achieving a median Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) of 0.72 compared to 0.58 for ISBA across the 600 stations.
• Parameterization: The Multiscale Parameter Regionalization (MPR) in mHM proved more effective at capturing spatial heterogeneity than the pedotransfer functions used in ISBA.
• Soil Moisture: Both models showed high correlation with satellite-derived surface soil moisture (r > 0.7), but ISBA exhibited higher sensitivity to soil texture data sources (e.g., FAO vs. European Soil Database).
• Resolution Impact: Increasing spatial resolution from 8 km to 1 km improved discharge simulations in mountainous catchments but had a limited impact on lowland areas for both models.

Contributions

• Provides the first comprehensive comparison between a standard Land Surface Model (LSM) and a dedicated Hydrological Model (HM) over the entire French territory using a unified atmospheric forcing.
• Demonstrates the potential of integrating mHM’s parameterization techniques (MPR) into the SURFEX-ISBA platform to improve the French national hydrometeorological monitoring and forecasting chain (SIM2).

Funding

• Météo-France: Internal research funding.
• SCHAPI: Support for the improvement of flood forecasting tools.
• French Ministry of Ecological Transition: Funding via the SIM2 project and national climate services programs.

Citation

@article{MelónNava2025Patterns,
  author = {Melón-Nava, Adrián},
  title = {Patterns of snow cover distribution in the Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain)},
  journal = {Buleria (Universidad de León)},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://openalex.org/W7125361743}
}

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