A Romanian daily high-resolution gridded dataset of snow depth (2005-2015)

Abstract

This study presents the spatial interpolation procedure from snow depth measurements at weather stations implying the following stages: (1) Spatial interpolation at 1 km × 1 km resolution of the mean multiannual values (2005-2015) corresponding to each month, computed from the data extracted from the climatological database; (2) Computation of the daily deviations against the multiannual monthly mean for every day and year over 2005-2015 and their spatial interpolation; (3) Spatio-temporal datasets were obtained through merging the two surfaces obtained in stages 1 and 2. The anomalies were considered to be the ratio between the daily snow depth values and the climatology. The spatial variability of the data used in the first stage was accounted for through the use of a series of predictors derived from the digital elevation model (DEM). To plot the maps with the climatological normals (multiannual means), the Regression-Kriging (RK) spatial interpolation method was used. In order to choose the optimum method applied in spatializing deviations, four interpolation methods were tested using a cross-validation procedure: Multiquadratic, Ordinary Kriging (separated and pooled variograms) and 3d Kriging.