Jabot E. auteur aut IRD Zin I. auteur aut IRD Lebel Thierry auteur aut IRD Gautheron A. auteur aut IRD Obled C. auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf born digital access Air temperature represents a key parameter for snow hydrology, as it controls the precipitation phase, as well as snow accumulation and snowmelt. Hydrological modelling in mountain regions like the Alps needs high-resolution temperature fields as input, preferably at sub-daily time steps. The estimation of such temperature fields is challenging due to the spatio-temporal variability of environmental lapse rates (i.e. the decreasing of temperature with altitude) associated to complex topography. In this study, 10 years (2000-2009) of data from about 200 temperature stations were interpolated at 0, 6, 12 and 18h Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) over a 1-km resolution grid covering a window of 71500 km2 in the Northern French Alps. Three different kriging methods were tested. Kriging with elevation as external drift gave the best results in terms of mean absolute error, root mean square error and kriging standard deviation. Adding potential solar radiation as an additional external variable did not improve significantly the interpolation results. Prediction errors showed dependence on elevation and season, as well as on the time of interpolation, with globally better results in summer and daytime than in winter and night-time. Despite some shortcomings that are discussed in the paper, the interpolated temperature fields look promising for further snowmelt and snow cover dynamics modelling studies. specialized temperature sub-daily time step environmental lapse rate kriging snow hydrology 062 26 17 2618-2630 2012 1099-1085 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010057197 10.1002/hyp.9423 1099-1085 [F B010057197] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010057197 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/intranet/publi/2012/10/010057197.pdf Accès réservé (Intranet de l'IRD) IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2012-11-09 2017-08-23 fdi:010057197 fre