1st European Snow Science Winter School
8-14 February 2015, Sodankylä, Finland
Objectives
The cryosphere forms an integral part of the climate system of the Earth. The cryosphere contains up to 75-80 % of the freshwater supply and in the Northern Hemisphere, seasonal snow cover extends to 49% of the total land surface in midwinter. The cryosphere affects the climate system through its influence on surface energy balance, moisture flux and atmospheric circulation over both seas and land surfaces. Monitoring of seasonal snow cover properties is therefore essential in understanding interactions and feedback mechanisms related to the cryosphere.
However, as a complex and highly variable medium, many essential properties of seasonal snow cover have traditionally been difficult to measure. Applications in diverse fields such as hydrology, avalanche forecasting and Earth Observation from space would benefit from improved quantification of snow cover properties, in particular related to the snow microstructure. The past 10 years snow science has seen a rapid change from a semi-quantitative to a quantitative science. Understanding physical and chemical processes in the snowpack requires detailed measurements of the microstructure. The progress in quantitative measurements was recently solidified by the Snow Grain Size Intercomparison Workshop 2014.
The most important quantitative techniques are micro-tomography, BET gas adsorption, and applicable in the field, reflection measurements in the infrared spectrum, near-infrared photography and high-resolution penetrometry.
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