Item: A snow microstructure supplement to sntherm model
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Title: A snow microstructure supplement to sntherm model
Proceedings: Proceedings of the 2006 International Snow Science Workshop, Telluride, Colorado
Authors: RK Aggarwal, MR Ravi and P Mahajan Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi-16
Date: 2006
Abstract: SNTHERM is a one dimensional heat and mass transfer model that predicts change in surface temperature, temperature of snow and soil layers, settlement of the snowpack, liquid water content, melt water percolation within the the snowpack and refreezing of water within the layers with time. Input required for the model is meteorological data i.e. air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, radiation data and fresh snow/rain precipitation rate. A major limitation of this model is that it predicts snow settlement, snow metamorphism and snow thermal conductivity based on empirical correlations without providing any information about the weak or strong snow layers. This information is vital for predicting the snow avalanches. A modified SNTHERM with grain metamorphism, bond growth, coordination number, dendricity and sphericity models included is implemented so that type of snow layers within a seasonal snowpack can be predicted with reasonable accuracy. Further, there is overall improvement in the model results with the inclusion of microstructure based thermal conductivity and viscosity models. The results obtained by implementing the new models are checked against published data. The study highlights the gaps in the understanding of snow microstructure which need to be filled with more work in near future.
Presenters: Unknown
Keywords: thermal conductivity, viscosity, microstructure, bond, grain
Subjects: snow microstructure sntherm model thermal conductivity
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Digital Abstract Not Available
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