Alaska Snow Depth and Water Equivalent Snow Depth: An Analysis of Relationships and the Distributions of Measured Dat

This thesis complements the research conducted for Snow Cover in Alaska: Comprehensive Review (SCA:CR). Daily snow depth and water equivalent snow depth (WESD) station readings from the Global Historical Climatology Network Daily data set were analyzed. The data was successfully cleaned using an exclude data by distance from model technique, where the model was a third degree polynomial and the distance was 3.3 standard deviations. The process and theory utilized to conduct the distribution analysis in SCA:CR is documented and reported in detail. An analysis to determine how the quantity of daily data readings affect seasonal maximum predictions and how the quantity of seasonal maximum values affect 50-year return period predictions is presented. It was found that for seasons with incomplete data: Further tests can be performed to evaluate if a value has occurred on a day of expected maximum reading for a specified probability of success threshold. The results of the return period analysis indicate that with further study it may be possible to show that using 6-years of data to calculate a 50-year return period is not significantly different than using 11-years of data. Finally, a stepwise regression analysis is conducted to show that for Alaska, station elevation does not significantly contribute to WESD.