Two cases of aerodynamic adjustment of sastrugi

Abstract

In polar regions, sastrugi are a direct manifestation of wind driven snow and form the main surface roughness elements. In turn, sastrugi influence the local wind field and associated aeolian snow mass fluxes. Little attention has been paid to these feedback processes, mainly because of experimental difficulties, and, as a result most polar atmospheric models currently ignore sastrugi. More accurate quantification of the influence of sastrugi remains a major challenge. In the present study, wind profiles and aeolian snow mass fluxes were analyzed jointly on a sastrugi covered snowfield in Antarctica. Neutral stability 10 m air-snow drag coefficients CDN10 were computed from six level wind speed profiles collected in Adélie Land during austral winter 2013. The aeolian snow mass flux in the first meter above the surface of the snow was also measured using a windborne snow acoustic sensor. This paper focuses on two cases during which sastrugi responses to shifts in wind direction were evidenced by variations in snow mass flux and drag coefficients. Using this dataset, it was shown that (i) the timescale of sastrugi aerodynamic adjustment can be as short as 3 h for friction velocities of 1 m s−1 or above and during strong windborne snow conditions, (ii) CDN10 values were in the range of 1.3–1.5 × 103 when the wind was well aligned with the sastrugi and increased to 3 × 103 or higher when the wind only shifted 20–30°, (iii) CDN10 can increase (to 120 %) and the aeolian snow mass flux can decrease (to 80 %) in response to a shift in wind direction, and (iv) knowing CDN10 is not sufficient to estimate the erosion flux that results from drag partitioning at the surface because CDN10 includes the contribution of the sastrugi form drag. These results not only support the existence of feedback mechanisms linking sastrugi, aeolian particle transport and surface drag properties over snow surface but also provide orders of magnitude, although further measurements including continuous accurate descriptions of the sastrugi field are certainly still needed. Such measurements are essential to improve parameterization schemes for aeolian snow transport models.