Authors: Christoph Marty Roland Meister
Publish Date: 2012/01/18
Volume: 110, Issue: 4, Pages: 573-583
Abstract
Snow and weather observations at Weissfluhjoch were initiated in 1936 when a research team set a snow stake and started digging snow pits on a plateau located at 2540 m asl above Davos Switzerland This was the beginning of what is now the longest series of daily snow depth new snow height and bimonthly snow water equivalent measurements from a highaltitude research station Our investigations reveal that the snow depth at Weissfluhjoch with regard to the evolution and interannual variability represents a good proxy for the entire Swiss Alps In order to set the snow and weather observations from Weissfluhjoch in a broader context this paper also shows some comparisons with measurements from five other highaltitude observatories in the European Alps The results show a surprisingly uniform warming of 08°C during the last three decades at the six investigated mountain stations The longterm snow measurements reveal no change in midwinter but decreasing trends especially since the 1980s for the solid precipitation ratio snow fall snow water equivalent and snow depth during the melt season due to a strong temperature increase of 25°C in the spring and summer months of the last three decadesWe are grateful that the National Weather Services of Austria ZAMG Germany DWD and Switzerland MeteoSwiss have maintained their longterm mountain observatories and thank them for providing the data and metadata for this analysis We also thank Charles Fierz for sharing his knowledge about the measurements at Weissfluhjoch and Marcia Phillips for polishing the English
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