1 Quantifying the impact of synoptic weather types and patterns 2 on energy fluxes of a marginal snowpack 3 Andrew Schwartz1, Hamish McGowan1, Alison Theobald2, Nik Callow3 4 1Atmospheric Observations Research Group, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Australia 5 2Department of Environment and Science, Queensland Government, Brisbane, 4000, Australia 6 3School of Agriculture and Environment, University of Western Australia, Perth, 6009, Australia 7 8 Correspondence to: Andrew J. Schwartz (
[email protected]) 9 10 Abstract. 11 Synoptic weather patterns are investigated for their impact on energy fluxes driving melt of a marginal snowpack 12 in the Snowy Mountains, southeast Australia. K-means clustering applied to ECMWF ERA-Interim data identified 13 common synoptic types and patterns that were then associated with in-situ snowpack energy flux measurements. 14 The analysis showed that the largest contribution of energy to the snowpack occurred immediately prior to the 15 passage of cold fronts through increased sensible heat flux as a result of warm air advection (WAA) ahead of the 16 front. Shortwave radiation was found to be the dominant control on positive energy fluxes when individual 17 synoptic weather types were examined. As a result, cloud cover related to each synoptic type was shown to be 18 highly influential on the energy fluxes to the snowpack through its reduction of shortwave radiation and 19 reflection/emission of longwave fluxes. As single-site energy balance measurements of the snowpack were used 20 for this study, caution should be exercised before applying the results to the broader Australian Alps region. 21 However, this research is an important step towards understanding changes in surface energy flux as a result of 22 shifts to the global atmospheric circulation as anthropogenic climate change continues to impact marginal winter 23 snowpacks.