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How Forward-Scattering Snow and Terrain Change the Alpine Radiation Balance With Application to Solar Panels

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Forward scattering of snow as a factor in local surface energy balance and winter PV production

Michael Lehning, Annelen Kahl

Because of its high albedo, snow changes the surface energy balance very signiKcantly and this introduces a strong positive feed-back loop with the local climate. In complex, mountainous terrain, the high albedo causes shortwave solar radiation to be reQec ...

2021

A snowfall downscaling scheme for mountainous terrain

Michael Lehning

In mountainous terrain, the spatial and temporal variability of the snow cover is driven by the interaction of meteorological processes with the underlying topography. Typically, terrain-precipitation-wind interactions predominantly shape the spatial snow ...

2021

The relative contribution of secondary ice processes in Alpine mixed-phase clouds

Athanasios Nenes, Alexis Berne, Georgia Sotiropoulou, Paraskevi Georgakaki, Etienne Gabriel Henri Vignon

In-situ observations of mixed-phase clouds (MPCs) forming over mountain tops regularly reveal that ice crystal number concentrations (ICNCs) are orders of magnitude higher than ice-nucleating particle concentrations. This discrepancy has often been attribu ...

2021

Local radiation maxima in snow-covered mountains and its influence on PV winter production

Michael Lehning, Jérôme François Sylvain Dujardin, Annelen Kahl, Felix Andreas Von Rütte

Mountains receive increased solar radiation because of a thinner atmosphere, the presence of snow on the ground and – in many regions such as the Alps – decreased winter cloudiness. In complex terrain, multiple terrain scattering further leads to radiation ...

2019

ESM-SnowMIP: assessing snow models and quantifying snow-related climate feedbacks

Nander Wever, Charles Fierz, Tao Wang, Xing Fang

This paper describes ESM-SnowMIP, an international coordinated modelling effort to evaluate current snow schemes, including snow schemes that are included in Earth system models, in a wide variety of settings against local and global observations. The proj ...

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH2018

A close-ridge small-scale atmospheric flow field and its influence on snow accumulation

Michael Lehning, Franziska Gerber, Sebastian Wilhelm Hoch

The rough, steep, and complex terrain in the alpine environment causes a variety of flow patterns such as blocking, speed-up, or flow separation, which influence precipitation, snow deposition, and ultimately snow distribution on the ground. Cloud-terrain ...

Amer Geophysical Union2017

Light‐absorbing impurities (LAIs) in snow of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau (TP) and their climatic impacts are of interest not only because this region borders areas affected by the South Asian atmospheric brown clouds but also because the seasonal snow ...

2017

The spatial distribution of snow in the mountains is highly heterogeneous, and processes behind this heterogeneity are not yet understood quantitatively. Based on (i) increasing accuracy and spatial coverage of remotely sensed snow depth maps, which have b ...

2016

Improving our fundamental understanding of the role of aerosol-cloud interactions in the climate system

Athanasios Nenes

The effect of an increase in atmospheric aerosol concentrations on the distribution and radiative properties of Earth's clouds is the most uncertain component of the overall global radiative forcing from preindustrial time. General circulation models (GCMs ...

National Academy of Sciences2016

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Urban areas are facing a growing deployment of solar technologies on the built exposed surfaces such as roofs and façades. This transformation often occurs without consideration of the needed architectural quality, which depends on the context sensitivity ...

F. Biljecki and V. Tourre2016