Modeling the impact of snow drift on the decameter-scale variability of snow properties on the Antarctic Plateau

Abstract

The annual accumulation and the physical properties of snow close to the surface on the Antarctic Plateau are characterized by a large decameter-scale variability resulting from snow drift that is not simulated by one-dimensional snow evolution models. Here, the detailed snowpack model Crocus was adapted to Antarctic conditions and then modified to account for this drift-induced variability using a stochastic snow redistribution scheme. For this, 50 simulations were run in parallel and were allowed to exchange snow mass according to rules driven by wind speed. These simple rules were developed and calibrated based on in situ pictures of the snow surface recorded for two years. The simulation performed with this new model shows three substantial improvements with respect to standard Crocus simulations. First, significant and rapid variations of snow height observed in hourly measurements are well reproduced, highlighting the crucial role of snow drift in snow accumulation. Second, the statistics of annual accumulation is also simulated successfully, including the years with net ablation which are as frequent as 15% in the observations and 11% in the simulation. Last, the simulated vertical profiles of snow density and specific surface area down to 50 cm depth were compared to 98 profiles measured at Dome C during the summer 2012–2013. The observed spatial variability is partly reproduced by the new model, especially close to the surface. The erosion/deposition processes explain why layers with density lower than 250 kg m−3 or specific surface area larger than 30 m2 kg−1 can be found deeper than 10 cm.