Concept

Avalanche

Related publications (178)

Spatiotemporal dynamics of snow erosion, deposition and horizontal mass flux

Michael Lehning, Enrico Paterna, Philip Crivelli

The quantification of snow transport, both in wind tunnels and the field, apply particle counting methods limited to punctual sampling of relatively small volumes. Particle counting can only capture horizontal mass fluxes, failing to measure snow erosion o ...

Cambridge University Press (CUP)2019

Suprématie helvétique du savoiret du faire? Danger d'avalanches.

Le savoir-faire suisse figurera-t-il sur la liste du patrimoine mondial? L'UNESCO pourrait répondre favorablement la semaine prochaine à cette requête helvétique aux origines valaisannes. ...

2018

Coupled Snow Cover and Avalanche Dynamics Simulations to Evaluate Wet Snow Avalanche Activity

Nander Wever

We present physics-based snowpack simulations for four snow seasons with detailed wet snow avalanche activity records. The distributed, spatially explicit simulations using the Alpine3D and SNOWPACK model show that the simulated snowpack in the release are ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2018

A mechanically-based model of snow slab and weak layer fracture in the Propagation Saw Test

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Lorenzo Benedetti

Dry-snow slab avalanche release is the result of failure initiation in a weak snowpack layer buried below a cohesive snow slab, which is then followed by rapid crack propagation. The Propagation Saw Test (PST) is a field experiment which allows to evaluate ...

2018

Wind-packing of snow: How do wind crusts form?

Christian Gabriel Sommer

Wind-packing of snow is the process responsible for the formation of wind slabs and wind crusts. These are hard layers of well-sintered snow often found in the snowpack in mountains as well as in polar regions. Wind-packing affects the local mass balance, ...

EPFL2018

Breaking size-segregation waves and mobility feedback in dense granular avalanches.

Christophe Ancey, Kasper van der Vaart

Through experiments and discrete particle method (DPM) simulations we present evidence for the existence of a recirculating structure, that exists near the front of dense granular avalanches, and is known as a breaking size-segregation (BSS) wave. This is ...

2018

The subtle mechanics of an avalanche – as seen in 3D

Drawing on the fact that the snow in an avalanche can behave like both a solid and a fluid, a young researcher at EPFL and WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF has managed to simulate a snow slab avalanche with unrivaled precision. ...

2018

Representation of Horizontal Transport Processes in Snowmelt Modeling by Applying a Footprint Approach

Michael Lehning, Sebastian Schlögl, Charles Fierz

The energy balance of an alpine snow cover significantly changes once the snow cover gets patchy. The local advection of warm air causes above-average snow ablation rates at the upwind edge of the snow patch. As lateral transport processes are typically no ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2018

Snowpack runoff formation processes during rain-on-snow events

Sebastian Würzer

Rain-on-snow (ROS) events cause repeated flooding in many mountainous regions with a seasonal snow cover. The complex interaction of processes across spatial scales makes it difficult to accurately predict the effect of snow cover on runoff formation for a ...

EPFL2018

Is the Thorpe and Mason model valid for drifting and blowing snow?

Varun Sharma, Michael Lehning, Francesco Comola

Sublimation of drifting and blowing snow has been recognized as an important component of the surface mass budget of polar and alpine regions. The Thorpe and Mason (TM) model is the basis of all existing small and largescale estimates of drifting snow sub ...

Copernicus2018

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