Estimating the amount of snowmelt based on viscous compression model of snow

✍ Scribed by Yuji Kominami; Yasoichi Endo; Shoji Niwano

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 148 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6087
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1085(199909)13:12/13<1773::aid-hyp865>3.0.co;2-t

✦ Synopsis

This paper describes a method to estimate the amount of snow melt using hourly data of total snow depth and precipitation. Based on viscous compression theory and an empirical relation between compressive viscosity and density of snow, an equation was derived to compute the time variation of the thickness of a snow layer due to viscous compression. Using the equation, the present height of the previous snow surface was computed, and the depth of hourly snowfall was estimated as the dierence between the present height of the previous snow surface and the measured present total snow depth. Substituting precipitation to this depth as the weight of the snow layer, the depth and weight of each hourly snow layer was estimated. Depth of snow melt was estimated by subtracting the measured thickness of snow depth reduction from the estimated thickness of snow compaction. The amount of snow melt was estimated as the estimated dry weight of these snow layer which was lost by snow melt. The approximated results agree well with estimated results by an alternative method used at the Tohkamachi experimental station in 1994/95.