This dataset contains analyses of changes in snow conditions in Northern Europe (land areas between 4-40 E, 50-72N) simulated by the latest CMIP6 generation of global climate models. Also provided are fortran programs and GrADS and R scripts employed to generate the results in the manuscript (Räisänen et al. 2024, submitted to International Journal of Climatology).

REFERENCE TO THE MANUSCRIPT (please refer to the final accepted version if/when the paper will be accepted):

Räisänen, P., Luomaranta, A., and Jylhä, K. (2024): Future snow scenarios for Northern Europe based on Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 data. International Journal of Climatology, submitted.

The starting point for the analysis was daily snow water equivalent (SWE) data for CMIP6 models for years 1951-2100, where historical experiments extending to year 2014 were combined with Shared Socieconomic Pathways scenarios SSP126, SSP245, SSP370 and SSP585 for years 2015-2100. A single ensemble member (i.e., model run) was analyzed for 15-17 CMIP6 models, depending on the scenario. In addition, large single-model ensembles (40-50 parallel runs) were analyzed for three CMIP6 models (ACCESS-ESM1-5, CanESM5 and MIROC6) for the SSP245 scenario. Based on these data, several snow season metrics were first computed for each "snow year" (from 1 Sep of the previous year to 31 Aug) in the period 1951-2100. These metrics included (but are not limited to) the maximum SWE in winter and the length, start date and end date of the longest continuous snow period. Based on these yearly metrics, trends over the periods 1951-2023 and 2023-2100 and 20-year running-mean changes compared to the reference period 1981-2010 were further computed and analyzed. Similar analysis was also performed for ERA5-Land reanalysis data (years 1951-2023).

The contents of the data files are described in the file "README_data.txt". The contents of the file containing code ("code_and_scripts.zip") are described in "README_code.txt" as well as in README files included in the zip file. The terms of use for the data and the code are given in the files "License_data.txt" and "License_code.txt", respectively.