Item: Slope scale avalanche forecasting in the arctic (Svalbard)
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Title: Slope scale avalanche forecasting in the arctic (Svalbard)
Proceedings: International Snow Science Workshop Proceedings 2018, Innsbruck, Austria
Authors:
- Alexander Prokop [ Snow Scan Research, Engineering, Education GmbH, Vienna, Austria ] [ UNIS -The University Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Norway ]
- Holt Hancock [ UNIS -The University Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Norway ]
- Martin Praz [ Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland ]
- Elisabeth Jahn [ Snow Scan Research, Engineering, Education GmbH, Vienna, Austria ]
Date: 2018-10-07
Abstract: On December 19th 2015 an avalanche struck the arctic town of Longyearbyen; 2 people were killed and 12 houses destroyed. Since this first avalanche has hit the settlement (another destructive avalanche occurred just 1 year later in February 2017) evacuations of residents in the remaining settlements are mandatory to manage avalanche hazardous conditions. To provide reliable avalanche warning and to limit the time of evacuations a correct avalanche forecast is necessary and depends strongly on the knowledge of snow cover properties in the potential avalanche prone slopes. For that reason 3 automated snow pack and weather monitoring stations were installed in the framework of the SASM (Svalbard Automated Snow Monitoring) project in the avalanche release areas that potentially endanger the town, to have knowledge about snow pack conditions especially during the dark arctic winter. These datasets represent together with meteorological measurements the first ever continuous collected data about snow depth, snow surface temperature, and snow temperatures on slopes in Svalbard. In comparison to alpine conditions this dataset allows to define typical arctic avalanche problems and typical arctic avalanche danger patterns that help to forecast avalanches in the arctic in the future. Furthermore the data was used to run the SNOWPACK model, to potentially have knowledge about the snowpack stratigraphy in those often-inaccessible slopes. Manually taken snow profiles were used to validate the model output and enabling to conclude about the model performance. Together with other observations this presentation aims to provide a detailed analysis about how to forecast avalanches under arctic conditions on the slope scale. The measurement setup will be explained; the collected data will be presented and analyzed as well as the SNOWPACK results are evaluated. We define in detail the avalanche problems the forecaster has to consider and discuss the frequency of the single avalanche trigger mechanisms.
Object ID: ISSW2018_O11.2.pdf
Language of Article: English
Presenter(s):
Keywords: Avalanche Forecasting, Snow Pack, Arctic, Snow Pack Properties
Page Number(s): 1035-1039
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