Top 5 Reasons Scientists Study Snow Based on Recent Snow and Simulation Studies

In the past decade, a number of studies on snow improved our understanding of how a crystal of snow forms and how environmental effects alter that growth, as well the question of why scientists bother to pay so much attention to snow in the first place.

The study of snow has continued since Descartes wrote about it in Les Meteors in 1637 with many scientists finding the ever changing patterns of snowflakes fascinating. But beyond the intricate beauty of their formation, the study of snow is often aligned with real world problems. Here's a list of recent studies and how they were used to further the knowledge of snow and the various effects of snow.

Scientists Study Snow to Understand Crystal Growth Patterns

A 2007 computer simulation study of snow crystal growth by Janko Gravner and David Griffeath [1] improved earlier computer models for where and under what conditions a snow crystal adds additional mass. A snowflake starts at the seed, often a dust particle or plant seed, then adds mass from either vapor or ice in layers, eventually growing six legs, some with plates, some with jagged edges. To see some of the various patterns from simple hexagons, stars, and enhanced stars with ribs, plates and firring, see Kenneth Libbrect's Snow Crystal Gallery .

The main science behind the growth of crystals is that at vapor-liquid boundary and at the vapor-ice boundary the effects of melting and freezing creates mathematically hard-to-model effects. The study added additional parameters that helped pull the boundary closer to every side of the snowflake and away from the more linear stochastic models.

The value of the study of how snowflakes form is that most snow research models use a crystal growth model at the center of their research regardless of whether it occurs within a cloud, falling to the ground, or lying within a snow bank.

Scientists Study Snow to Identify Atmospheric Pollution and Global Warming

When snow falls, the frozen water crystals also contain molecules of other gases including nitrous oxide and peroxide. In a 2001 study in the Antarctic on Ross Island, scientists used the fact that sunlight will trigger known reactions between various chemicals contained in snow to quantify how much nitrous oxide and peroxide are released, factors that can be used for predictions depending on the time of day and year. Nitrous oxide is known to play a role in the creation of the ozone layer, so understanding how much nitrous oxide is exchanged between the air and the snow bank aids work on global warming and the analysis about how to solve pollution problems.[2]

Scientists Study Snow to Understand the Origin of the Universe

Snow is present throughout the solar systems. In many cases, meteorites found on Earth called chondrites, read more about them in "Top Extraterrestrials and What Science Has Learned About Them", show how dust particles collect other dust particles and combine into larger pieces. A similar process occurs when ice particles in the rings around Saturn collide at a simplistic level. A 2008 study modeled larger Kuiper Belt type objects and Enceladus and allowed for the centers to contain water and flow outward with the purpose of using a mathematically simplified model. The results predicted two things seen in the Kuiper Belt-an ice depleted core and an outer layer of ice on the surface and one being investigated, whether or not such objects could have liquid centers. [3]

Scientists Study Snow for Improved Weather Prediction

In a 2006 study in France, scientists combined volunteer collection and measurement of hailstones with radar soundings of storm clouds to gather information that could improve the quality of hailstorm prediction and found evidence that supported the belief that night time hail storms were severe i.e. with larger hailstone size and number. It implies people might want to put their car under a roof at night. [4]

Scientists Study Snow to Make Transportation Operations Safer for Travelers

A 2007 study of road surface conditions compared to a long-term simulation of the road using satellites to remotely observe conditions. The difficulty of predicting road ice relates to the specific weather condition that might cause it-fog, sleet, surface water, snow and snow pack and the temperature at the time. The study compared results predicted by piece of software against sampled data with good validation that the software worked, and it could be a real savings over installing a lot of equipment all over France to measure similar results in order to provide warnings and road closures for travelers. The software under evaluation uses boundary level conditions calculated from surface and vapor fluxes along with variables for traffic and surface roughness, etc.[5]

Another study in 2008 looked at the ice buildup on surfaces like airplane wings from balloon born instruments at various levels and at various times of the year.[6]

Scientists Study Snow to Aid Ski Resort and Highway Pass Operations

Ski resorts require snow to operate and they need to ensure that skiers are safe from the effects of avalance. When snowflakes or particles fall to the ground, they tend to combine together without melting but note effectively. A 2002 study of snow looked at the size of snow particles in snow then applied test torque tests to blocks of that snow in order to obtain the elastic sheer modulus of snow, that remains independent of temperature. The elastic sheer modulus of snow is a factor that relates the triggering energy needed to cause the snow to avalanche or "twist apart and slide". [7]

[1] Janko Gravner, David Griffeath, "Modeling snow crystal growth II: A mesoscopic lattice map with plausible dynamics", Elsevier, Sep 8, 2009

[2] Cort Anastasio, Edward S. Galbavy, Manuel A. Hutterli, John F. Burkhart, Donna K. Friel, "Photoformation of hydroxyl radical on snow grains at Summit, Greenland", Atmospheric Environment 41, 2007

[3] Dina Prialnik, Rainer Merk, "Growth and evolution of small porous icy bodies with an adaptive-grid thermal evolution code", Icarus, March 24, 2008

[4] Dario B. Giaiotti, Fulvio Stel, "The Effects of environmental water vapor on hailstone size distributions", Atmospheric Research, Feb. 2, 2006

[5] L. Bouilloud, E. Martin, F. Habets, A. Boone, P. Le Moigne, J. Livet, M. Marchetti, A. Foidart, L. Franchisteguy, S. Morel, JNoilhan, and P. Pettre, "Road Surface Condition Forecasting in France", Journal of Applied Meteogology and Climatology, October 11, 2007

[6] Ben C. Bernstein, Christine Le Bot, "An Inferred Climatology of Icing Conditions Aloft Including Supercooled Drops, Part II: Europe, Asia and the Globe", Journal of Applied Meteorology, July 7, 2008

[7] Jurg Schweizer, Christian Camponovo, "The temperature dependence of the effective elastic shear modulus of snow", Cold Regions Science and Technology 35, 2002, 55-64