Brief communication: Light-absorbing impurities can reduce the density of melting snow

Climatic effects of black carbon (BC) deposition on snow have been proposed to result from reduced snow albedo and increased melt due to light-absorbing particles. In this study, we hypothesize that BC may decrease the liquid-water retention capacity of melting snow, and present our first data, wher...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Cryosphere
Main Authors: O. Meinander, A. Kontu, A. Virkkula, A. Arola, L. Backman, P. Dagsson-Waldhauserová, O. Järvinen, T. Manninen, J. Svensson, G. de Leeuw, M. Leppäranta
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2014
Subjects:
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Geology
QE1-996.5
The Cryosphere
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-991-2014
https://doaj.org/article/9a56283bc35f4a54a308f0b5d56369b2
Description
Summary:Climatic effects of black carbon (BC) deposition on snow have been proposed to result from reduced snow albedo and increased melt due to light-absorbing particles. In this study, we hypothesize that BC may decrease the liquid-water retention capacity of melting snow, and present our first data, where both the snow density and elemental carbon content were measured. In our experiments, artificially added light-absorbing impurities decreased the density of seasonally melting natural snow. No relationship was found in case of natural non-melting snow. We also suggest three possible processes that might lead to lower snow density.

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