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

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: Meinander, O., Kontu, A., Virkkula, A., Arola, A., Backman, L., Dagsson-Waldhauserová, P., Järvinen, O., Manninen, T., Svensson, J., de Leeuw, G., Leppäranta, M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2014
• Subjects: article; Verlagsveröffentlichung; The Cryosphere
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-991-2014; https://noa.gwlb.de/receive/cop_mods_00019926; https://noa.gwlb.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/cop_derivate_00019881/tc-8-991-2014.pdf; https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/8/991/2014/tc-8-991-2014.pdf

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.