Comparison of Snowfall Variations over China Identified from Different Snowfall/Rainfall Discrimination Methods

Based on the snowfall observations at 836 surface weather stations in China and the Daily Surface Climate Variables of China version 3.0 dataset for 1961–2013, capability of five methods with different objective criteria for identifying wintertime snowfall is evaluated, to provide reference for application of these methods in snowfall/rainfall discrimination. Methods I, II, III, IV, and V use the daily average surface air temperature (T_a), wet-bulb temperature (T_w), dynamic threshold T_w, 0-cm ground temperature, and 700–850-hPa thickness, respectively, to identify the snowfall. The results show that the climatological distribution of snowfall can be well produced by Methods I, II, and III. Method IV underestimates the snowfall days in eastern Tibetan Plateau (ETP), and Method V cannot yield the actual large numbers of snowfall days and amounts. Accordingly, the linear trends of snowfall days estimated from Methods I, II, and III largely agree with the observations, while a discrepancy is found in the linear trend of snowfall amounts over southeastern China (SEC). For interannual and decadal variations of snowfall, Method V shows the worst performance. It is more reasonable to use T_w to distinguish snowfall from rainfall instead of T_a, 0-cm ground temperature, and 700–850-hPa thickness; and the reference thresholds of T_w in northeastern China (NEC), northwestern China (NWC), ETP, and SEC are −1.5, −1.5, −0.4, and −0.3°C, respectively. The above results are beneficial to identifying snowfall in short-term climate prediction.