Boreal forests and snow in climate models

Snow has an important role in the energy balance and hydrology of boreal forests, but general circulation models (GCMs) have so far had to use very simple representations of forests and snow cover in simulations of climate and climate change. Results are shown from a comparison between heat fluxes measured over a coniferous canopy and simulated by the land surface scheme used in the Hadley Centre GCM. Simulated sensible and latent heat fluxes are found to be highly sensitive to the assumed distribution of snow between the canopy and the ground. This sensitivity is reduced, but remains large, when the surface scheme is coupled to an atmospheric model.