Abstract
Snow gliding, a slow movement downhill of snow cover, is complex to forecast and model and yet is extremely important, because it drives snowpack dynamics in the pre-avalanching phase. Despite recent interest in this process and the development of some studies therein, this phenomenon is poorly understood and represents a major point of uncertainty for avalanche forecasting. This study presents a data-driven, physically based, time-dependent 1D model, Poli-Glide, able to predict the slow movement of snowpacks along a flow line at the daily scale. The objective of the work was to create a useful snow gliding model, requiring few, relatively easily available input data, by (i) modeling snowpack evolution from measured precipitation and air temperature, (ii) evaluating the rate and extent of movement of the snowpack in the gliding phase, and (iii) assessing fracture (i.e., avalanching) timing. Such a model could be then used to provide hazard assessment in areas subject to gliding, thereby, and subsequent avalanching. To do so, some simplifying assumptions were introduced, namely that (i) negligible traction stress occurs within soil, (ii) water percolation into snow occurs at a fixed rate, and (iii) the micro topography of soil is schematized according to a sinusoidal function in the absence of soil erosion. The proposed model was then applied to the “Torrent des Marais-Mont de La Saxe” site in Aosta Valley, monitored during the winters of 2010 and 2011, featuring different weather conditions. The results showed an acceptable capacity of the model to reproduce snowpack deformation patterns and the final snowpack’s displacement. Correlation analysis based upon observed glide rates further confirmed dependence against the chosen variables, thus witnessing the goodness of the model. The results could be a valuable starting point for future research aimed at including more complex parameterizations of the different processes that affect gliding.
Highlights
Using a shape file depicting the 2010 avalanche event and uploading the coordinates of the glide shoes within the GIS tool, we found out the release zone of the potential gliding movements
Here, we analyze how snowpack dynamics are depicted by our model after parameter tuning
We report therein the modeled and measured snow gliding, the measured temperature of air and soil, measured precipitation, and snow depth modeled over time, as described above
Summary
Snow gliding, defined as a gravity-driven, slow, and viscous downhill movement of snowpack, can lead to the formation of folds and cracks, which eventually may result in glide-snow avalanches [1]. The existence of glide processes has been recognized since the. 1930s, and yet such a process is not fully understood given the lack of proper observations [2]. The forecasting of glide-snow avalanches contains major uncertainty, given their unpredictability [3,4,5,6]. Snow glide motion monitoring and modeling are essential for glide avalanche hazard assessment [4,7]
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