Abstract
In snow, water coexists in solid, liquid and vapor states. The relative abundance of the three phases drives snow grain metamorphism and affects the physical properties of the snowpack. Knowledge of the content of the liquid phase in snow is critical to estimate the snowmelt runoff and to forecast the release of wet avalanches. Liquid water does not spread homogeneously through a snowpack because different snow layers have different permeabilities; therefore, it is important to track sudden changes in the amount of liquid water within a specific layer. We reproduced water percolation in the laboratory, and used Raman spectroscopy to detect the presence of the liquid phase in controlled snow samples. We performed experiments on both fine- and coarse-grained snow. The obtained snow spectra are well fitted by a linear combination of the spectra typical of liquid water and ice. We progressively charged snow with liquid water from dry snow up to soaked snow. As a result, we exploited continuous, qualitative monitoring of the evolution of the liquid water content as reflected by the fitting coefficient c.
Highlights
IntroductionThe initial shape of the crystallites formed in a cloud include plates, needles, hollow columns, dendrites, depending on the combinations of temperature and water vapor supersaturation values they experience along their free fall down to the ground, where they progressively accumulate [2]
We performed four different experiments in which we added controlled amounts of liquid water to different snow batches, as summarized in Table 2, where the conditions adopted to charge with water the two different kinds of snow, namely natural-like snow (NLS) and natural snow (NS) are grouped
In our experiments, we discard the role of water vapor due to the dominant weight of the amount of liquid water we deliberately inject in the sample from its top surface
Summary
The initial shape of the crystallites formed in a cloud include plates, needles, hollow columns, dendrites, depending on the combinations of temperature and water vapor supersaturation values they experience along their free fall down to the ground, where they progressively accumulate [2]. Temperature gradients, humidity and wind are the leading factors that concur with the evolution of the layers that progressively accumulate upon successive snowfalls and build up the snowpack. The size and shape of the constituting snow grains concurrently evolve. Strict control of ambient temperature and supersaturation allows us to produce natural-like snow crystals with a degree of perfection higher than that of spontaneously grown crystals [4]
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