Fiber Optic Distributed Temperature Sensing of Snow

Physical properties of seasonal and perennial snow covers can vary significantly on the order of a few meters with direct impact on snow dynamics, thermodynamics, temporal evolution, and ultimately on local snow water storage representing a challenge for measurement and modeling efforts. Detailed knowledge on small scale variability in snow internal temperature, density, and resulting subsurface heat fluxes is relatively limited, and pertinent snow cover internal data are also difficult to obtain. Uncertainty in the quantification of the components of the surface and snow internal energy budget is a consequence. From an experimental point of view, acquisition of distributed temperature data in the snow pack is non-trivial since accumulation, ablation, metamorphosis, etc., lead to continuous changes in the snow surface level. To provide better observational evidence of small scale variability and the associated snow physical processes we use fiber optic distributed temperature sensing (DTS), a rapidly emerging technology in environmental sensing, which provides high resolution temperature measurements in space (1 meter) and time (a few minutes) with a resolution better than 0.1C over distances of several kilometers. Innovative experimental designs such as 2D transects and high resolution vertical temperature profiles using fiber optic cables were deployed and tested at high altitude sites in the Swiss Alps. The results of the experiments yield both expertise in the application of the novel measurement systems and new insight in snow pack thermodynamics such as 2D conductive heat fluxes. Also, wind pumping processes were investigated with a complimentary experimental system of synchronized high frequency measurements of atmospheric turbulence and barometric pressure fluctuations in the snow.