Rain-on-Snow events in Japan as projected by a large ensemble of regional climate simulations
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Rain‑on‑Snow events in Japan as projected by a large ensemble of regional climate simulations Masamichi Ohba1 · Hiroaki Kawase2 Received: 17 March 2020 / Accepted: 7 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Rain-on-Snow (ROS) events can cause severe snowmelt hazards such as river flooding, avalanches, and landslides that have significant impacts on various sectors. The influence of climate change on the frequency of ROS events in Japan was investigated using climate projections obtained from the Database for Policy Decision making for Future climate change (d4PDF). The projected future climate in the regional model simulations showed an increase in the ROS events over the mountainous areas in Hokuriku (Sea of Japan side of Central Japan) and Hokkaido (Northern Japan) regions, where a higher amount of snowfall will still occur in the future. Characteristics of ROS events such as rainfall, snowmelt, and related runoff were also enhanced in these regions. Self-organizing maps (SOMs) were applied using the surface atmospheric circulation data to determine the dominant ROS-related weather patterns (WPs) in the present and future climate. The SOMs showed that some WPs had a significant effect on the cause of the ROS events. The differences in the impacts of climate change between the WPs were evaluated to understand the future changes in runoff and snowmelt associated with ROS events. The SOM analysis suggests that the increase in the occurrence of ROS events and the resultant enhancement in their characteristics in the future-climate projection can be attributed to the changes in the dominant ROS-related WPs (from cyclonic to coldsurge type) corresponding to variations in the freezing point line. These findings can inform water hazard and water resource management plans that aim to withstand regional climate change. Keywords Climate change · Rain-on-Snow events · Regional climate modeling · Self-organizing map · Snowmelt flood · Ater resource · Weather patterns
1 Introduction The phenomenon of rainfall on snow is called a Rain-onSnow (ROS) event that can cause severe hazards such as river flooding, snow avalanches, and landslides because of a combination of rain and snowmelt. These ROS events have significant impacts on various sectors, especially with regards to water resources management, flood forecasting, and risk management (e.g. Freudiger et al. 2014; McCabe Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05419-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Masamichi Ohba oba‑[email protected] 1
Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI), 1646 Abiko, Abiko‑shi, Chiba 270‑1194, Japan
Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency, Tsukuba, Japan
2
et al. 2007; Sui and Koehler 2001). The ROS events and the related disasters occur not only during the snowmelt season in the early spring (Ishii 2019), but also during the snowfall seas
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