[1] It has been a long-standing puzzle why clouds, which should interact with solar radiation similarly to a thin layer of snow, have such a dramatic effect on the reflectance observed by satellites over snow-covered regions. The presence of a cloud over the snow strongly enhances the anisotropy of the scene, so that a cloud-over-snow scene appears darker than clear sky over snow when observed ...

As demonstrated in the previous chapter, snow interacts strongly with the global climate system, both influencing and forming as a result of this system. The following chapters discuss the interaction of snow with the chemical and biological systems. This chapter discusses the physical properties of snow as the habitat and regulator of the snow ecosystem. In this sense, the physical snow cover ...

Background: In this article, it was analyzed how snow melting affects the assembly of lichen and moss communities in a small area of the coastal region of Barton Peninsula, which is in maritime Antarctic. In the small area, even though there is a huge gap of difference of the environment between the snow-filled area and snow-melt one, the latter did not have distinctive environmental gradients....

The microwave interferometric radiometer of the European Space Agency’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission measures at a frequency of 1.4 GHz in the L-band. In contrast to other microwave satellites, low frequency measurements in L-band have a large penetration depth in sea ice and thus contain information on the ice thickness. Previous ice thickness retrievals have neglected a sno...

A local to regional assessment of transported snow during snow storms or subsequent periods of strong winds is a prerequisite to reliably predict avalanche danger. Despite the fact that it has received continuing attention for decades, the problem of quantifying snow transport persists. Systems from point measurements to full three-dimensional simulations are in operation but all have their res...

Using new, daily cloud-free snow-cover products, this study examines snow cover dynamics and their response to climate change. The results demonstrate that the daily cloud-free snow-cover products not only posses the advantages of the AMSR-E (unaffected by weather conditions) and MODIS (relatively higher resolution) products, but are also characterized by high snow and overall classification ac...

Snow monitoring is essential for prediction of flooding due to rapid snowmelt, to provide snow avalanche risk forecasts and for water resource management – including hydropower production, agriculture, groundwater and drinking water. Sentinel-1 C-band SAR is sensitive to presence of wet snow and can be used to binary snow-wetness classification. Wet-snow mapping into more categories has been de...

Current snowmelt parameterisation schemes are largely untested in warmer maritime snowfields, where physical snow properties can differ substantially from the more common colder snow environments. Physical properties such as snow density influence the thermal properties of snow layers and are likely to be important for snowmelt rates. Existing methods for incorporating physical snow properties ...

Meltwater discharge and electrical conductivity were measured in eight 1 3 1 m lysimeters, and snow accumulation and electrical conductivity of melted samples were measured in snow pits during four snowmelt seasons at Mammoth Mountain, California. The peak snow-water equivalent ranged from 0.57 to 2.92 m over the four melt seasons. Lysimeter discharges ranged from 20% to 205% of the mean flow; ...

Introduction Knowledge of snow parameters is important for climatology, meteorology, hydrology, flood prevention and hydropower industry. Liquid water in a snow pack shows a dominant effect on reflection, absorption and transmission of electromagnetic waves especially in microwave region. Liquid water in snow plays a major role in metamorphism, mechanics and hydrology of snow, and in soil engin...