Twenty-Seven Years of Manual Fresh Snowfall Density Measurements on Whistler Mountain, British Columbia
Snow density is important information for a wide range of activities including avalanche control, marketing, building-code development, weather forecasting, and water supply forecasting. Extended recent high-quality datasets from the mountainous regions of the Pacific Northwest coastal area are rare...
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ftdatacite:10.6084/m9.figshare.5188636 2023-05-15T15:14:54+02:00 Twenty-Seven Years of Manual Fresh Snowfall Density Measurements on Whistler Mountain, British Columbia Barton, Mark 2017 https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5188636 https://tandf.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Twenty-Seven_Years_of_Manual_Fresh_Snowfall_Density_Measurements_on_Whistler_Mountain_British_Columbia/5188636 unknown Taylor & Francis https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2017.1331157 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 CC-BY 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified FOS Earth and related environmental sciences Ecology FOS Biological sciences 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified Marine Biology Science Policy dataset Dataset 2017 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5188636 https://doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2017.1331157 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z Snow density is important information for a wide range of activities including avalanche control, marketing, building-code development, weather forecasting, and water supply forecasting. Extended recent high-quality datasets from the mountainous regions of the Pacific Northwest coastal area are rare. This paper presents a study of an unusually long and continuous (January 1990 to April 2016) manually collected dataset of fresh snowfall measurements for Whistler Mountain, British Columbia, Canada. The dataset consists of snowboard core measurements that were collected by Whistler–Blackcomb ski patrol staff twice daily for avalanche control and resort-marketing purposes. These records were collated, transcribed, quality controlled, and made computer accessible in this study. A discussion of the characteristics of the data collection site and an assessment of data reliability are presented. Two examples of the many purposes to which this high-quality dataset might be put were studied. Climatic teleconnections to winter (December–February) mean snow density were examined, which revealed a positive relationship to the quadratic form of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern (i.e., PDO 2 ). In addition, an analysis of daily snow density relationships to air mass types was performed, which suggested that higher (lower) densities are associated with maritime inflow (arctic outflow) conditions. Both of these relationships appear to be mediated by the positive correlation between snow density and air temperature. Based on the full dataset ( N = 1275 individual snow density measurements) for all months with measured snowfall, annual snowfall season (November to May) mean snow densities ranged from 77 kg m −3 to 109 kg m −3 with an overall mean of 91 kg m −3 , giving an overall snow-depth to water-depth ratio of 11:1. Dataset Arctic DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Arctic British Columbia ENVELOPE(-125.003,-125.003,54.000,54.000) Canada Pacific |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
unknown |
topic |
59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified FOS Earth and related environmental sciences Ecology FOS Biological sciences 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified Marine Biology Science Policy |
spellingShingle |
59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified FOS Earth and related environmental sciences Ecology FOS Biological sciences 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified Marine Biology Science Policy Barton, Mark Twenty-Seven Years of Manual Fresh Snowfall Density Measurements on Whistler Mountain, British Columbia |
topic_facet |
59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified FOS Earth and related environmental sciences Ecology FOS Biological sciences 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified Marine Biology Science Policy |
description |
Snow density is important information for a wide range of activities including avalanche control, marketing, building-code development, weather forecasting, and water supply forecasting. Extended recent high-quality datasets from the mountainous regions of the Pacific Northwest coastal area are rare. This paper presents a study of an unusually long and continuous (January 1990 to April 2016) manually collected dataset of fresh snowfall measurements for Whistler Mountain, British Columbia, Canada. The dataset consists of snowboard core measurements that were collected by Whistler–Blackcomb ski patrol staff twice daily for avalanche control and resort-marketing purposes. These records were collated, transcribed, quality controlled, and made computer accessible in this study. A discussion of the characteristics of the data collection site and an assessment of data reliability are presented. Two examples of the many purposes to which this high-quality dataset might be put were studied. Climatic teleconnections to winter (December–February) mean snow density were examined, which revealed a positive relationship to the quadratic form of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern (i.e., PDO 2 ). In addition, an analysis of daily snow density relationships to air mass types was performed, which suggested that higher (lower) densities are associated with maritime inflow (arctic outflow) conditions. Both of these relationships appear to be mediated by the positive correlation between snow density and air temperature. Based on the full dataset ( N = 1275 individual snow density measurements) for all months with measured snowfall, annual snowfall season (November to May) mean snow densities ranged from 77 kg m −3 to 109 kg m −3 with an overall mean of 91 kg m −3 , giving an overall snow-depth to water-depth ratio of 11:1. |
format |
Dataset |
author |
Barton, Mark |
author_facet |
Barton, Mark |
author_sort |
Barton, Mark |
title |
Twenty-Seven Years of Manual Fresh Snowfall Density Measurements on Whistler Mountain, British Columbia |
title_short |
Twenty-Seven Years of Manual Fresh Snowfall Density Measurements on Whistler Mountain, British Columbia |
title_full |
Twenty-Seven Years of Manual Fresh Snowfall Density Measurements on Whistler Mountain, British Columbia |
title_fullStr |
Twenty-Seven Years of Manual Fresh Snowfall Density Measurements on Whistler Mountain, British Columbia |
title_full_unstemmed |
Twenty-Seven Years of Manual Fresh Snowfall Density Measurements on Whistler Mountain, British Columbia |
title_sort |
twenty-seven years of manual fresh snowfall density measurements on whistler mountain, british columbia |
publisher |
Taylor & Francis |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5188636 https://tandf.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Twenty-Seven_Years_of_Manual_Fresh_Snowfall_Density_Measurements_on_Whistler_Mountain_British_Columbia/5188636 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-125.003,-125.003,54.000,54.000) |
geographic |
Arctic British Columbia Canada Pacific |
geographic_facet |
Arctic British Columbia Canada Pacific |
genre |
Arctic |
genre_facet |
Arctic |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2017.1331157 |
op_rights |
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5188636 https://doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2017.1331157 |
_version_ |
1766345303297884160 |