Approach to Retrieve Regional Snowfall Distribution Using Remotely Sensed Snow Covered Area and Distributed Hydrological Model

Abstract

The objective of this study is to retrieve regional snowfall distribution from standard meteorological data and remotely sensed snow covered area using a distributed hydrological model. Two snowfall models are implemented into a distributedhydrological model to simulate snowfall, snowmelt and runoff processes during a complete snowfall-snowmelt cycle from Nov.1, 1992 to May 31, 1993 over Uono River basin. Hydrographs and images of snow covered area are derived for various sets of parameters in snowfall models and compared with the observed ones. In order to select parameters, a criteria is proposed to consider errors of both hydrograph and snow covered area. Using this criteria, reasonable parameters which represent the regional snowfall distribution are obtained for above two snowfall models.