The snow simulations from the National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) Community Climate Model Version 3 (CCM3) coupled with the Land
Surface Model (LSM) and the Biosphere-Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS) show significant differences in snow mass and extent. Some of these differences can be attributed to different simulated precipitation and surface air temperature, resulting from the fully-coupled land surface-atmosphere interactions. Therefore, it is unknown how the different model structures in LSM and BATS directly affect the snow simulations. To isolate this direct impact, this study focuses on an intercomparison of both land models in off-line mode (i.e. uncoupled to the CCM3) using the long-term snow cover and meteorological data from a grassland catchment at the Valdai water-balance research site in Russia. This data set has been used in the Project for Intercomparison of Land-surface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS) Phase 2(d) in which BATS is involved. This paper first presents results from the models in their original structure, and then investigates the impacts of using different parameterizations for snow density, albedo and snow areal masking function