The Relationship Between Snowfall and Snow Depth Using Intensive Snowfall Observations

In China, snow disaster occurs frequently and covers a vast territory which can remarkably impact agriculture, traffic, people's life and many other aspects. The relationship between snowfall and snow depth is an important parameter for the snow forecasting and other related researches, which plays a role in snow disaster prevention and mitigation. And newly support is given with the starting of intensive snowfall observations since the winter of 2009. These new intensive snowfall observations during winters of 2009—2012 and the linear fit function of least absolute deviation method are used to analyze the relationship between snowfall and snow depth. Furthermore, the study is conducted on how it changes with conditions of different temperatures, time, regions and using other snow data.As a result, it is found that the ratio of snow depth increment to snowfall in China during winter is 0.75 cm·mm^-1 in general, which is consistent with the result that using the regular winter observational rainfall and snow depth data. And it also shows that the ratio of snow depth increment to snowfall would decrease apparently with air temperature rising for the impact of temperature conditions on the state of snowing. In addition, the relationship between snowfall and snow depth presents marked difference in different region on the basis of investigating eighteen provinces in China which cover most regions that may have snow in winter. This relation is relatively stable in different temperature conditions, which also reveals that the ratio of snow depth increment to snowfall would increase slightly when temperature drops in most regions. And the relationship shows no obvious temporal variation, but it can be found that the relationship in Northwest and Northeast China is stable but fluctuant in North China and the Huanghuai Area.A preliminary analysis about the relationship between snowfall and snow depth is conducted under different conditions, its result can be used as a reference for snow depth estimation and used in weather forecasting and decision-making support. Further discussion on new data is needed to obtain more accurate and reasonable parameters in practice. Moreover, the intensive snowfall observations provide new data for snow research, but they also have many limitations which can affect the final result. Since it is a common problem that the research on snow is restricted by lacking suitable snow data, more high quality snow observations will be needed to support further analysis in the future.