CORDIS provides links to public deliverables and publications of HORIZON projects.
Links to deliverables and publications from FP7 projects, as well as links to some specific result types such as dataset and software, are dynamically retrieved from OpenAIRE .
Exploitable results
Present knowledge is limited about climatic processes at the high latitude boreal zone during wintertime. This is where the largest climatic change is expected. Many atmospheric and hydrological models do not properly reflect the characteristics of wintertime processes. There is also a lack of measurements to guide development of models. The WINTEX project aimed at improving the planning of a forthcoming wintertime field experiment within the framework of NOPEX.
Atmospheric modelling improved chances for successful experiments by pointing at weaknesses under strongly stable conditions in very cold weather. Effects of low solar elevations are considerable, e.g. giving rise to considerable sensible heat fluxes during cold weather because of heating of tree stems and few models treat radiative fluxes well under these conditions. Detailed local-scale models of snow and soil frost have helped to emphasize the importance of initial soil-water content before a snow-cover emerges.
Snow, the most pronounced feature of the wintertime landscape, must be observed with a combination of manual and automated methods in future experiments. Desktop studies of remote-sensing methods screened problems with most satellite sensor types, and indicated that passive microwave radiometry in combination with VIS and NIR will provide the best results for wintertime boreal studies. Wintertime measurements at the southern and northern limits of the boreal zone have pinpointed several practical problems related e.g. to low solar elevations, cold weather, or rapidly changing weather conditions. Traditionally, eddy-correlation techniques proved trustworthy for measurement of atmospheric fluxes in most wintertime situations but should be complemented with scintillometry, particularly during periods of intermittent turbulence. Airborne measurements, both remote-sensing and atmospheric are possible and useful for a future wintertime field experiment. They must be well planned and undertaken on the basis of the operational needs of the experiment.
Results from WINTEX is published as a Special Issue, together with the EU-funded LAPP project, of “Theoretical and Applied Climatology” (volume 70, 2001, pp. 1-243 and a CD with documented datasets).
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