Baba M. W. auteur aut IRD Boudhar A. auteur aut IRD Gascoin S. auteur aut IRD Hanich L. auteur aut IRD Marchane A. auteur aut IRD Chehbouni Abdelghani auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf reformatted digital access Melt water runoff from seasonal snow in the High Atlas range is an essential water resource in Morocco. However, there are only few meteorological stations in the high elevation areas and therefore it is challenging to estimate the distribution of snow water equivalent (SWE) based only on in situ measurements. In this work we assessed the performance of ERA5 and MERRA-2 climate reanalysis to compute the spatial distribution of SWE in the High Atlas. We forced a distributed snowpack evolution model (SnowModel) with downscaled ERA5 and MERRA-2 data at 200 m spatial resolution. The model was run over the period 1981 to 2019 (37 water years). Model outputs were assessed using observations of river discharge, snow height and MODIS snow-covered area. The results show a good performance for both MERRA-2 and ERA5 in terms of reproducing the snowpack state for the majority of water years, with a lower bias using ERA5 forcing. specialized MAROC snow cover snow water equivalent Morocco MERRA-2 ERA5 MAROC 062 126 020 13 7 890 [14 p.] 2021 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010081317 10.3390/w13070890 [F B010081317] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010081317 https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/2021-05/010081317.pdf IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2021-05-17 2025-02-24 fdi:010081317 fre