Changes in snow distribution and surface topography following a snowstorm on Antarctic sea ice

Abstract

Snow distribution over sea ice is an important control on sea ice physical and biological processes. We combine measurements of the atmospheric boundary layer and blowing snow on an Antarctic sea ice floe with terrestrial laser scanning to characterize a typical storm and its influence on the spatial patterns of snow distribution at resolutions of 1–10 cm over an area of 100 m × 100 m. The pre‐storm surface exhibits multidirectional elongated snow dunes formed behind aerodynamic obstacles. Newly deposited dunes are elongated parallel to the predominant wind direction during the storm. Snow erosion and deposition occur over 62% and 38% of the area, respectively. Snow deposition volume is more than twice that of erosion (351 m3 versus 158 m3), resulting in a modest increase of 2 ± 1 cm in mean snow depth, indicating a small net mass gain despite large mass relocation. Despite significant local snow depth changes due to deposition and erosion, the statistical distributions of elevation and the two‐dimensional correlation functions remain similar to those of the pre‐storm surface. Pre‐storm and post‐storm surfaces also exhibit spectral power law relationships with little change in spectral exponents. These observations suggest that for sea ice floes with mature snow cover features under conditions similar to those observed in this study, spatial statistics and scaling properties of snow surface morphology may be relatively invariant. Such an observation, if confirmed for other ice types and conditions, may be a useful tool for model parameterizations of the subgrid variability of sea ice surfaces.

High‐Resolution Large Eddy Simulation of Snow Accumulation in Alpine Terrain

“…The spatial extension of these accumulation zones is generally lower than the extension of the erosion areas and the amount of deposited snow can locally reach 150 mm (liquid water equivalent) on the leeward sides of some crests. Similar contrasts between the extension of erosion and deposition zones have been reported by Trujillo et al () when studying snow redistribution on sea ice at high resolution (100 m × 100 m area).…”

A Distributed Snow‐Evolution Model for Sea‐Ice Applications (SnowModel)

“…Alternatively, for coarse‐resolution applications, subgrid snow‐depth spatial variability could be accounted for by combining the relative frequency information in Figure with the methods presented in Liston (), without actually simulating the distributions presented in Figures and . Trujillo et al () also suggested this approach may be valid at large scales. All of the components are in place to perform a wide variety of snow‐evolution simulations, ranging from local, to regional, to pan‐Arctic scales.…”

“…In this paper, we focus on how snow, once deposited, is redistributed on the surface of sea ice: a topic whose importance in controlling the sea‐ice cover is increasingly clear. There are two key types of wind‐related snow‐accumulation features present on sea ice (Figure ; Iacozza & Barber, ; Lange & Eicken, ; Peters, ; Sturm et al, ; Sturm & Massom, ; Trujillo et al, ): (1) snowdrifts that form around ice pressure ridges and ice blocks that serve as topographic obstructions to the wind and (2) a relatively thin veneer snow that includes snow dunes and other bedforms on comparatively flat, undeformed ice. These two snow structures are analogous to snow erosion and deposition features found in terrestrial systems (e.g., Filhol & Sturm, ; Liston et al, ).…”

The European mountain cryosphere: A review of past, current and future issues

“…For example, ice-lenses or liquid water in snow heavily influence the microwave backscatter (Marshall et al, 2007), which is the basis for many satellite remote-sensing products. The problem of proper up-scaling snow properties is not peculiar to the complex terrain of mountains, but exists also for less complex topography such as Antarctic sea ice (Trujillo et al, 2016) or the Greenland ice sheet, where it is unknown how much melt water can be stored in snow and firn (Forster et al, 2014). 30…”