Snow modelling to understand the impacts of Little Ice Age climate change
| Parent Project Details | |
| Parent Project Title: | Snow Modelling Iceland |
| Sub Projects: |
Snow modelling Hörgardalur Snow modelling Skaftártunga |
Project Details | |
| Title: | Snow modelling to understand the impacts of Little Ice Age climate change |
| Permalink: | https://www.nabohome.org/cgi-bin/explore.pl?seq=215 |
| Abstract: | This project aims to use an existing process based snow model to simulate changes in snow cover and distribution for sites in Iceland and in Greenland. Changes in the duration and depth of snow cover through periods of climatic deterioration may have had significant impacts on pastoral farmers, particularly if snow cover extended into the spring. The Little Ice age is a known period of climatic cooling that would have increased the duration of snow cover.
Long term records of snow cover beyond a few decades do not exist so modelling is the only way to determine how snow cover would have changed. Climatic scenarios are drawn from Global Circulation models to show snow cover in good (warm) and bad (cold) years.
Fieldwork in March 2014 at the two study areas took measurements of snow thickness and density allowing a calibration of the model against modern meteorological datasets.
Currently (November 2015) this project is being written up for publication in 2016. Sites in Iceland will be compared to sites in Greenland. |
| Keywords: | Comparative Island Ecodynamics, modelling, LIttle Ice Age, snow |
| Sponsors/Funders: | NSF |
| Country: | Other |
| Project Start Year: | 2014 |
| Projected End Year: | 2016 |
Account Owner | |
| Contact: | Richard Streeter |
| Institution: | University of St Andrews |
| Postal Address: | Institute of Geography and Sustainable Development
Irvine Building St Andrews |
| Post Code: | KY16 9AL |
| Email: | rts3@st-andrews.ac.uk |
Project extent
The geographical extent of this project has not been defined.