Observations of capillary barriers and preferential flow in layered snow during cold laboratory experiments

Avanzi, Francesco; Hirashima, Hiroyuki; Yamaguchi, Satoru; Katsushima, Takafumi; De Michele, Carlo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2013-2016

Articles | Volume 10, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2013-2016

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2013-2016

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

Articles | Volume 10, issue 5

Research article

|

09 Sep 2016

Research article |

| 09 Sep 2016

Observations of capillary barriers and preferential flow in layered snow during cold laboratory experiments

Francesco Avanzi, Hiroyuki Hirashima, Satoru Yamaguchi, Takafumi Katsushima, and Carlo De Michele

Data sets

Profiles of liquid water content and wet-snow fraction around capillary barriers in layered snow measured during infiltration experiments in a cold laboratory Francesco Avanzi, Hiroyuki Hirashima, and Satoru Yamaguchi https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.882524

Short summary

We investigate capillary barriers and preferential flow in layered snow during nine cold laboratory experiments. The dynamics of each sample were replicated solving Richards equation within the 1-D multi-layer physically based SNOWPACK model. Results show that both processes affect the speed of water infiltration in stratified snow and are marked by a high degree of spatial variability at cm scale and complex 3-D patterns.