Intercomparison of snow density measurements: Bias, precision and spatial resolution

Abstract

Density is a fundamental property of porous media such as snow. A wide range of snow properties and physical processes are linked to density, but few studies have addressed the uncertainty in snow density measurements. No study has yet considered the recent advances in snow measurement methods such as micro-computed tomography (CT). During the MicroSnow Davos 2014 workshop different approaches to measure snow density were applied in a controlled laboratory environment and in the field. Overall, the agreement between CT and gravimetric methods (density cutters) was 5 to 9 %, with a bias of -5 to 2 %, expressed as percentage of the mean CT density. In the field, the density cutters tend to overestimate (1 to 6 %) densities below and underestimate (1 to 6 %) densities above 296 to 350 kg m-3, respectively, depending on the cutter type. Using the mean per layer of all measurement methods applied in the field (CT, box, wedge and cylinder cutter) and ignoring ice layers, the variation of layer density between the methods was 2 to 5 % with a bias of -1 to 1 %. In general, our result suggests that snow densities measured by different methods agree within 9 %. However, the density profiles resolved by the measurement methods differed considerably. In particular, the millimeter scale density variations revealed by the high resolution CT contrasted the thick layers with sharp boundaries introduced by the observer. In this respect, the unresolved variation, i.e. the density variation within a layer, which is lost by sampling with lower resolution or layer aggregation, is critical when snow density measurements are used as boundary or initial conditions in numerical simulations.