The atmospheric heating over snow-covered forested areas and snowmelt

The atmospheric heating over snow-covered forested areas has been discussed with the use of a local circulation model combined with a canopy heat balance model. Although the snow temperature was never higher than 0°C, an upward sensible heat flux was supplied from the forest canopy, resulting in the atmospheric heating. The value of calculated sensible heat flux from the ground to the atmosphere reaches 100 W m^-2 for a sparse canopy and 300-400 W m^-2 for a dense canopy in a typical clear condition in spring. Daily maximum air temperature at the height of 10 m exceeded 0°C if the initial ground surface temperature was larger than -5°C. In addition, the amount of snowmelt in snow-covered forested areas have been studied for prescribed meteorological elements. -Authors