A Coupled Model to Simulate Snow Behavior on Roads

Abstract

To develop a decision-making tool for road management in winter, a numerical model resulting from the coupling of a soil model and a snow model was developed and validated using experimental results from a comprehensive experimental field campaign during three winters (1997/98, 1998/99, and 1999/2000). The coupling of the models has been done through an implicit calculation of the conduction flux between snow and road. An equivalent thermal resistance has been used to take into account the different road-snow interface configurations. For this purpose, a parameterization of water-saturated snow was introduced. This model permits the simulation of the snow behavior on a road, and it takes into account different interfacial configurations according to snow and road types and the snowpack evolution (freezing, melting, grain type). Comparisons of experimental and simulated results for typical snowfall events or over the entire winter showed that the model was able to simulate road surface temperature, snow occurrence on the road, and snow-layer evolution with good accuracy.

Intercomparison of retrieval algorithms for the specific surface area of snow from near-infrared satellite data in mountainous terrain, and comparison with the output of a semi-distributed snowpack model

“…The snowpack model Crocus has been successfully evaluated at several sites and under different climatic conditions (e.g. Durand et al, 1999;Bouilloud and Martin, 2006;Wagnon et al, 2009;Brun et al, 2012).…”

The detailed snowpack scheme Crocus and its implementation in SURFEX v7.2

“…In the first version of Crocus , the conductive heat flux at the snow/soil interface was set at a typical value observed at the experimental site of Col de Porte (1325 m altitude, French Alps). Several studies showed that this assumption fails under different climate or snow conditions: interaction between road surface and the overlying snowpack (Bouilloud and Martin, 2006), subarctic snowpack (Jacobi et al, 2010) or snowpack over a tropical glacier (Lejeune et al, 2007;Wagnon et al, 2009). To overcome this limitation, Crocus was coupled to ISBA by Bouilloud and Martin (2006) and this coupled version was further used to study the mass balance of the moraines over a tropical glacier (Lejeune et al, 2007), and for an intercomparison with several other snowpack models in terms of SWE (Snow Water Equivalent) simulations in Southern Quebec (Langlois et al, 2009).…”

Accounting for anthropic energy flux of traffic in winter urban road surface temperature simulations with the TEB model

“…Through training and standard productions, they have begun to make infrastructure managers aware of the need to control the amounts spread. Many studies are dedicated to forecasting of the road surface temperature (RST) (Shao and Lister, 1995;Sass, 1997;Paumier and Arnal, 1998;Chapman et al, 2001;Crevier and Delage, 2001;Raatz and Niebrügge, 2002;Bouilloud and Martin, 2006;Bouilloud et al, 2010). A forecast of the snowfall and RST helps coordination of winter maintenance services, optimizing their costs, and reduces the environmental impacts caused by an inappropriate use of de-icers.…”

“…A forecast of the snowfall and RST helps coordination of winter maintenance services, optimizing their costs, and reduces the environmental impacts caused by an inappropriate use of de-icers. Considerable effort has been devoted to meteorological forecasting of these adverse weather conditions, particularly for road freezing conditions (Rayer, 1987;Takle, 1990;Borgen et al, 1992;Saas, 1992;Brown and Murphy, 1996). To forecast RST, winter maintenance operators rely on numerical models.…”