The atmospheric snow-transport model: SnowDrift3D

摘要

SnowDrift3D, a high-resolution, atmospheric snow-transport model, is presented for thefirst time. In contrast to most state-of-the-art snowdrift models, atmospheric particle transport, i.e.saltation and suspension, is accounted for by one passive transport equation. The model uses unsteadywind fields (spatial resolution of up to 2 m) computed with an atmospheric computational fluid dynamicsmodel that is directly connected to the numerical weather prediction model ALADIN. Sensitivity runsshow that (1) the saltation mass flux is a function of cubic shear velocity, u_*~3, (2) the model is marginallysensitive to the grid spacing at high resolutions (up to 2 m), (3) the model computes the redistribution ofsnow at high resolution in real time on dual core personal computers and (4) the changing topographyof the snow cover should be included in cases of local erosion or deposition of a large amount of snow.Finally, we present a comparison of modeled and measured snow distributions obtained by terrestriallaser scanning showing area-wide linear correlation up to R = 0.33.