The Guadalfeo Monitoring Network (Sierra Nevada, Spain): 14years of measurements to understand the complexity of snowdynamics in semiarid regions

Abstract. This work presents the Guadalfeo Monitoring Network in Sierra Nevada (Spain), a snow monitoring network in the Guadalfeo Experimental Catchment, a semiarid area in southern Europe representative of snow packs with highly variable dynamics on both the annual and seasonal scales, and significant topographic gradients. The network includes weather stations that cover the high mountain area in the catchment and time-lapse cameras to capture the variability of the ablation phases on different spatial scales. The data sets consist of continuous meteorological high frequency records at five automatic weather stations located at different altitudes ranging from 1300 to 2600 m a.s.l. that include precipitation, air temperature, wind speed, air relative humidity, and the short- and long-wave components of the incoming radiation, dating from 2009 for the oldest station (2530 m a.s.l.) ( https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.895236 ); additionally, daily data sets of fractional snow cover area and snow depth from the imagery from two time-lapse cameras are presented, with different scene area (30×30 m, and 2 km 2 , respectively) and spatial resolution, from 2009 ( https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.871706 ). Some research applications of these datasets are also included to highlight the value of high resolution data sources to improve the understanding of snow processes and distribution in highly variable environments. The datasets are available from different open source sites and provide both the snow hydrology scientific community and other research fields, such as terrestrial ecology, riverine ecosystems or water quality in high mountains,with a valuable and high-potential information in snow-dominated areas in semiarid regions.