Seminar: Dr. Julie Theriault

Dr. Julie Theriault joins us from le département des sciences de la Terre et de l’atmosphère at UQAM for a seminar titled Factors impacting the catch efficiency of snow gauges. Refreshments will be served.

Abstract

Accurate measurement of snowfall can be critical for a wide variety of studies including snowpack variability, hydrology and regional climate modelling. Systematic errors in measurements of snow are often observed due to the gauge-shield geometry. It is well documented that the catch efficiency of a gauge-shield configuration decreases with increasing wind speed, with a lot of scatter for a given wind speed. This study will examine the causes leading to the scatter in the catch efficiency of snow gauges at the Marshall Test site near Boulder Colorado. The scatter in the data at a given wind speed arises from the variability in, for example, the characteristics of snow and turbulence. These key factors were identified using both observations collected in the field and computational fluid dynamics. Preliminary analysis of the relationship among automatic measurements of the particle characteristics, wind speed and the catch efficiency of different gauge shield configurations will be discussed. Overall, this study contributes to improve our understanding of the variability associated with the automatic measurement of solid precipitation.