Interactions between drifting snow and surface dynamics

In the cryosphere, the snow cover is the fastest changing component. Amongst other characteristics, the snow cover acts as a resource of water or has the ability to reflect the suns radiation and therefore significantly influence the climate on a global scale. During the winter period in the northern hemisphere, up to 23% of the earth's surface is covered with snow. In alpine regions starting at a certain elevation or at high latitudes, snow is the predominant state of the surface during winter time. Changes in the distribution of this snow cover are driven by different processes such as precipitation or melting. One main driver for the changes of this snow cover is aeolian transport, the transport of snow by the wind which is often referred to as drifting and blowing snow. In polar regions with predominant snow surfaces, little precipitation and subfreezing temperatures the redistribution of snow has a major role for the hydrological mass balance. Besides the redistribution of mass as a hydrological resource, in alpine regions, the redistribution of snow also has a major effect on the danger of avalanches.

Understanding how the snow surface responds to the forces of the wind is the key to understand the subsequent redistribution of the snow. Aeolian transport of snow has been previously described in literature, mainly focusing on the transport of the particles in the boundary layer, also with reasonable temporal resolution. Little attention has been given to the quantification of changes at the snow surface. This work takes a new approach to look at the changes of the snow surface in combination with the horizontal mass-flux during events of drifting snow. It aims to quantify these changes on a relatively high spatial and temporal resolution by means of a Kinect sensor.