Characterizing Sierra Nevada Snowpack Using Variable Resolution CESM
AbstractThe location, timing, and intermittency of precipitation in California make the state integrally reliant on winter season snowpack accumulation to maintain its economic and agricultural livelihood. Of particular concern is that winter season snowpack has shown a net decline across the western United States over the past 50 years, resulting in major uncertainty in water resource management heading into the next century. Cutting edge tools are available to help navigate and preemptively plan for these uncertainties. This paper uses a next generation modeling technique variable resolution global climate modeling within the Community Earth System Model (VR CESM) at horizontal resolutions of 0.125deg (14 km) and 0.25deg (28 km) VR CESM provides the means to include dynamically large scale atmosphere ocean drivers, to limit model bias, and to provide more accurate representations of regional topography while doing so in a more computationally efficient manner than can be achieved with conventional general