Concept
Avalanche
Related publications (178)
A seasonal snowpack model forced with dynamically downscaled forcing data resolves hydrologically relevant accumulation patterns
Michael Lehning, Tobias Jonas, Dylan Stewart Reynolds
The Mountain snowpack stores months of winter precipitation at high elevations, supplying snowmelt to lowland areas in drier seasons for agriculture and human consumption worldwide. Accurate seasonal predictions of the snowpack are thus of great importance ...
Frontiers Media Sa2024Impact of intercepted and sub-canopy snow microstructure on snowpack response to rain-on-snow events under a boreal canopy
Michael Lehning, Adrien Michel, Nander Wever, Daniel Nadeau, Benjamin Bouchard
Rain-on-snow events can cause severe flooding in snow-dominated regions. These are expected to become more frequent in the future as climate change shifts the precipitation from snowfall to rainfall. However, little is known about how winter rainfall inter ...
2024Good enough: Intermediate complexity atmospheric models improve the representation of processes affecting seasonal snow
Snow plays a crucial role in processes regulating ecosystems, the climate, and human development. Mountain snowpack in particular has great relevance for downstream communities. Knowledge about the distribution and properties of the snowpack thus help in p ...
EPFL2024Influence of sun cups on surface albedo of wet Alpine snowpack
Michael Lehning, Mathias Thierry Pierre Bavay, Francesca Carletti
In high elevation Alpine areas, characterised by high snow accumulation and radiation-driven melt processes, the formation of peculiar ablation features called sun cups can be observed. Sun cups likely influence the energy and mass balance of the wet snowp ...
2024A Depth-Averaged Material Point Method for Shallow Landslides: Applications to Snow Slab Avalanche Release
Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny, Bertil Trottet, Denis Aloyse Joseph Steffen, Louis Marie Cédric Guillet
Shallow landslides pose a significant threat to people and infrastructure. Despite significant progress in the understanding of such phenomena, the evaluation of the size of the landslide release zone, a crucial input for risk assessment, still remains a c ...
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2023Using video detection of snow surface movements to estimate weak layer crack propagation speeds
Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Bertil Trottet, Alec van Herwijnen
Dry-snow slab avalanches release due to crack propagation in a weak snow layer under a cohesive snow slab. Crack propagation speeds can provide insights into the potential size of avalanches and inform fracture and avalanche release models. Despite their i ...
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS2023CRYOWRF-Model Evaluation and the Effect of Blowing Snow on the Antarctic Surface Mass Balance
Varun Sharma, Michael Lehning, Franziska Gerber
The surface mass balance (SMB) of large polar ice sheets and of snow and ice surfaces in general are incompletely understood because of the complexity of processes involved. One such process, drifting and blowing snow, has only been considered in a very si ...
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2023An empirical model to calculate snow depth from daily snow water equivalent: SWE2HS 1.0
Many methods exist to model snow densification in order to calculate the depth of a single snow layer or the depth of the total snow cover from its mass. Most of these densification models need to be tightly integrated with an accumulation and melt model a ...
COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH2023Convection of snow: when and why does it happen?
Convection of water vapor in snowpacks is supposed to have a major impact on snow density and microstructure profiles with strong implications for the thermal regime and snow stability. However, the process has never been directly measured and only recentl ...
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2023Snow transport in extreme environments: from small to large scale modeling
The cold regions on Earth, such as the polar and high mountain regions, are snow covered for at least a part of the year. These snow-covered surfaces are highly dynamic, particularly under the influence of strong winds. The aeolian or wind-driven transport ...
EPFL2023