[Objective] The study aimed to apply energy balance snowmelt model for estimating the snowmelt runoff generated by seasonal snow in Tianshan Mountains. [Method] Three snow water collecting sites were set on a sunny slope in western Tianshan Mountains to measure the snowmelt rates at hourly interval. The positive sensible heat and negative latent heat fluxes were calculated by the energy balance snowmelt model; the snowmelt rate was also estimated by the model. Finally, the ac- curacy for the model was investigated in detail. [Result] The results indicated that sensible heat fluxes and latent heat fluxes accounted for 13.4% of total energy input and 15.1% of energy output, respectively. A good agreement between observed and estimated SWE was proved by low volume difference and the high Nash-Sutcliff coef- ficients（R2） which were 0.86, 0.92 and 0.91, respectively. [Conclusion] The energy balance snowmelt model has been proved to be a powerful tool for snowmelt estimation.
