Snow Water
A block of snow can be evaluated a bit like a tree with its rings. Sequences of snowfall events accumulate snow on top of each other and put pressure on existing layers that maybe already developed a crust from sun exposure. Old layers might have already started to melt and changed from champagne powder that off-piste skiers seek to slushy mixes of ice crystals and water.
National Avalanche Services developed physical models that try to keep track of the energy influxes and outputs in a system approach, but up to this day, field trips and manual sample collections are essential for them.
Our model to generate snow densities and therefore snow-water-equivalents (SWE) is based on an empirical approach with an estimated RMSE of 53 kg/m2. It leaves out the many details mentioned above but rather gives a general estimation at larger scales, in order to derive the one parameter most valuable for hydropower plants, the amount of water they can expect from snow melt.
Last updated
Was this helpful?