Articles | Volume 20, issue 11
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2961-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2961-2020
Research article
 | 
06 Nov 2020
Research article |  | 06 Nov 2020

Non-stationary extreme value analysis of ground snow loads in the French Alps: a comparison with building standards

Erwan Le Roux, Guillaume Evin, Nicolas Eckert, Juliette Blanchet, and Samuel Morin

Data sets

The S2M meteorological and snow cover reanalysis in the French mountainous areas (1958-present) M. Vernay, M. Lafaysse, P. Hagenmuller, R. Nheili, D. Verfaillie, and S. Morin https://doi.org/10.25326/37

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Short summary
To minimize the risk of structure collapse due to extreme snow loads, structure standards rely on 50-year return levels of ground snow load (GSL), i.e. levels exceeded once every 50 years on average, that do not account for climate change. We study GSL data in the French Alps massifs from 1959 and 2019 and find that these 50-year return levels are decreasing with time between 900 and 4800 m of altitude, but they still exceed return levels of structure standards for half of the massifs at 1800 m.
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