Utah Energy Balance Grid (UEBGrid) Snow Model
The Utah Energy Balance (UEB) snow model is an energy balance snowmelt model developed by David Tarboton's research group,
first in 1994, and updated over the years. The model is written in FORTRAN and uses a lumped representation of the snowpack
and keeps track of water and energy balance. The model is driven by inputs of air temperature, precipitation, wind speed,
humidity and radiation at time steps sufficient to resolve the diurnal cycle (six hours or less). The model uses physically-based
calculations of radiative, sensible, latent and advective heat exchanges. A force-restore approach is used to represent surface
temperature, accounting for differences between snow surface temperature and average snowpack temperature without having
to introduce additional state variables. Melt outflow is a function of the liquid fraction, using Darcy's law. This allows
the model to account for continued outflow even when the energy balance is negative. Because of its parsimony
(few state variables - but increasing with later versions) this model is suitable for application in a
distributed fashion on a grid over a watershed. There are a number of versions available.
UEBGrid has added the capability to represent the melting of glaciers and adopted a very structured file based input/output
format using ASCII and netCDF files to facilitate its use in a NASA project and its incorporation into the EPA BASINS software.
UEBGrid is a command line program developed using Intel Fortran XE 2011 on a Windows platform.
We have done our best to use standard platform independent Fortran so the code should work with other compilers.
We welcome comments on making this better.
More information on UEB, it's original version, presentations and journal articles are available here
Download UEBGrid, Sample Dataset and Users' guide
Model is available here. This contains the source code and Compiled Windows Binary executable in Release folder (updated on 11/12/2013)
Example dataset. This contains example input and output data set for Langtang Khola watershed, Nepal for 2003 water year (updated on 11/12/2013)
Input-Output Interface document. A complete users' manual is coming soon! (updated on 11/12/2013)
UEBGrid - Development Versions
To facilitate collaboration and open development of UEB, authors have created a
Bitbucket code repository. The repository, issue tracker and wiki are public
which means that anyone can access the source code and comment on issues. If you
would like to contribute to and commit source code changes please email David G. Tarboton at
dtarb@usu.edu. The repository is available here. There
are some instructions for getting started using UEB from this repository under
the source tab in Documentation.
Running UEBgrid
To run the model
Open a command prompt.
1. Create a path to the executable UEB\Model\UEBGrid\Release\UEBGrid.exe (or copy the executable to the folder where input data is saved)
2. Change directory to the folder where the input data is saved
3. At the prompt type: uebgrid twdefControl.dat (in case you are using testData from the UEBGrid (11-12-2013) itself)
or
At the prompt type: uebgrid LangTangKholaControl.dat (in case you are using Data from the Data (11-12-2013))
Project configuration
All source code is in the folder UEB\Model\
The file UEB\Model\VisualStudioProjConfiguration.txt describes the configuration of UEB for compiling with Intel Fortran XE 2011 and Visual Studio. This also includes information on obtaining and linking to the Unidata NetCDF library that we use.
The folder UEB\Model\UEBGrid contains the Visual Studio Solution and project files.
UEB\Model\UEBGrid\Release contains the latest compiled executable for Windows (32 bit).
Authors
David G. Tarboton (dtarb@usu.edu), Professor, Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State University
Avirup Sen Gupta (avirup.sengupta@aggiemail.usu.edu), PhD student and Graduate Reserach Assistant, Utah State University 2010-present
Vinod Mahat, Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Alberta
Charlie Luce (cluce@fs.fed.us), USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Boise, ID
Jinsheng You, PhD student at USU completing 2004
Tom Jackson, PhD student at USU completing, 1994
Tanveer Chowdhury, MS student at USU completing 1993
Copyright
Copyright (C) 2012 David Tarboton, Utah State University, dtarb@usu.edu. http://www.engineering.usu.edu/dtarb
UEB is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
UEB is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
A copy of the GNU General Public License is included in the file gpl.txt. This is also available at: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
If you wish to use or incorporate this program (or parts of it) into other software that does not meet the GNU General Public License conditions contact the author to request permission.
David G. Tarboton
Utah State University
8200 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322-8200
USA
http://www.engineering.usu.edu/dtarb/
email: dtarb@usu.edu
Acknowledgements
Following funding agencies have supported the develoopment of UEB.
NASA Grant NNX11AK03G has supported the development of UEBGrid
USDA-CREES award 2008-34552-19042 Utah Drought Management Project supported the development of the vegetation components