How will snow alter exposure of organisms to cold stress under climate warming?

Abstract

Aim: The aim was to test the capacity of an ecologically focused microclimate model to capture the interaction between snow cover and soil temperature and use it to assess how historical and future climate warming affects exposure of organisms to stressfully cold conditions in shallow soil. Location: Continental USA. Time period: 1980–2017. Methods: A snow heat budget algorithm was developed and integrated with the general-purpose microclimate model of the NicheMapR package. The gridMET daily historical weather grids were used as environmental forcing. The model was tested against hourly observations of soil temperature and snow cover for 590 Soil Climate Analysis Network/SNOw TELemetry site..