Development and calibration of an automatic spectral albedometer to estimate near-surface snow SSA time series

Picard, Ghislain; Libois, Quentin; Arnaud, Laurent; Verin, Gauthier; Dumont, Marie

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-1297-2016

Articles | Volume 10, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-1297-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-1297-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 3

Research article

|

21 Jun 2016

Research article |

| 21 Jun 2016

Development and calibration of an automatic spectral albedometer to estimate near-surface snow SSA time series

Ghislain Picard, Quentin Libois, Laurent Arnaud, Gauthier Verin, and Marie Dumont

Data sets

Time-series of snow spectral albedo and superficial snow specific surface area at Dome C in Antarctica, 2012-2015 G. Picard et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.860945

Short summary

Albedo of snow surfaces depends on snow grain size. By measuring albedo during 3 years at Dome C in Antarctica with an automatic spectroradiometer, we were able to monitor the snow specific surface area and show an overall growth of the grains in spring and summer followed by an accumulation of small-grained snow from mid-summer. This study focuses on the uncertainties due to the spectroradiometer and concludes that the observed variations are significant with respect to the precision.