Shedding light on snow’s crucial role in Earth’s climate system

Arctic [credit: discover.lanl.gov]

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“Snow is still a mystery” says a researcher. Climate science has work to do.
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EU researchers are braving extreme Arctic conditions to shed light on snow’s crucial role in Earth’s climate system, says Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine (via Phys.org).

An average temperature of -30°C and up to 24 hours of darkness a day. Those were the working conditions for a team of scientists who spent nine months researching snow in the Arctic.

“Very white, vast and cold,” is how snow expert Dr. Marie Dumont describes the field campaign in Cambridge Bay, also known as Iqaluktuuttiaq, a hamlet in Canada’s far north inhabited mostly by the indigenous Inuit population.

“The coldest temperature we experienced was -50°C. It’s certainly a special kind of life,” she added.

The field research is part of a six-year project named IVORI, that runs until 2027, to improve our understanding of snow, glaciers, ice sheets and permafrost.

Mysteries of snow
Why snow, one might ask? Because there is much more to it than meets the eye. It is, in fact, a pillar of our climate system.

“There are three main properties of snow that impact the Earth’s climate system,” explains Dumont, IVORI coordinator and director of the Snow Research Center at Météo-France, the official French meteorological administration.

Firstly, it is white. Snow reflects solar radiation back to the atmosphere and therefore limits the warming of the Earth.

Secondly, snow consists of ice and air, which gives it great insulating properties. A covering of snow insulates the ground and protects everything in the soil from increasing temperatures.

And lastly, melting snow influences the water cycle in nature.

However, despite its considerable impact, snow still holds many unanswered questions.

“Everyone feels that they understand snow, but we actually know very little about it,” says Pascal Hagenmuller, a researcher specializing in snow mechanics and avalanche studies at the Snow Research Center, part of France’s National Center for Meteorological Research.

“Even simple observations such as why snow sometimes makes sounds when you compress it—and sometimes not—are unclear. Snow is still a mystery.”

Arctic snow
To the untrained eye, all snow looks the same, but the IVORI researchers know that Arctic snow is very different from the type we encounter in Europe.

“We know a bit about how to model snow in the Alpine regions, but we don’t know much about the snow in the Arctic Circle, even though this snowpack is much more important for the global climate,” said Dumont.

Full article here.
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Image: Arctic scene [credit: discover.lanl.gov]

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/12/21/shedding-light-on-snows-crucial-role-in-earths-climate-system/