Contribution of snow melt to the surface energy budget observed during the 2005 Montreal Urban Snow Experiment (MUSE)

The first Montreal Urban Snow Experiment (MUSE-2005) was conducted between 17 March and 14 April 2005. The main goal of this experiment was to document the evolution of surface characteristics and energy budget in a dense urban area during the winter-spring transition. This field campaign is particularly interesting for the study of the impact that a rapidly changing snow pack could have on the surface energy budget. Indeed, preliminary analysis of MUSE results showed that the latent heat of fusion required to melt snow on the ground is a significant sink of energy, which is not negligible when compared with other terms of the surface energy budget. In this study, the magnitude of the snow melting term is more accurately determined using snow pack measurements and is compared with other components of the energy budget such as anthropogenic heat and storage terms. Numerical simulations with the Town Energy Balance (TEB) using this experimental dataset will also be presented.