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

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Abstract

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. © Author(s) 2014.

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APA

Meinander, O., Kontu, A., Virkkula, A., Arola, A., Backman, L., Dagsson-Waldhauserová, P., … Leppäranta, M. (2014). Brief communication: Light-absorbing impurities can reduce the density of melting snow. Cryosphere, 8(3), 991–995. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-991-2014

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