Inter‐annual variation in the topographic controls on catchment‐scale snow distribution in a maritime alpine catchment,New Zealand

Seasonal snow is a globally important water resource that contributes substantially to upland and lowland water resources. As such, there is a need to understand the controls on the spatial and temporal variation in snow distribution. This study meets this research need by investigating the topographic controls on snow depth distribution in the upper Jollie catchment in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Furthermore, inter‐annual variation in the importance of the topographic controls is examined and linked to variation in the dominant synoptic‐scale weather patterns over a 4‐year period (2007–2010). Through the use of regression trees, the relative importance of the topographic controls on snow depth was shown to vary between the four study years. In particular, elevation explained the greatest amount of variance in 2007 and 2008 and east‐exposure explained the greatest variance in 2009 and 2010. The other wind exposure variables also had a large effect on the snow depth distribution in 2009 and 2010. Differences in the frequency and duration of synoptic weather patterns were physically consistent with the changing importance of these variables. In particular, a higher frequency of troughing events in 2009 and 2010 is thought to be associated with a reduced importance of elevation and greater influence of wind exposure on snow depth in these years. These findings demonstrate the importance of using multi‐year data sets, and of considering topographic and climatic influences, when attempting to model alpine snow distribution. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.