Water pressure in ripe snowpacks

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The water pressure regime of a quasi steadily melting homogeneous and isotropic snowpack is derived from Darcy's equation and from an experimental determination of the permeability‐pressure relation for snow. The derivation demonstrates that at a given melt rate, (1) significant water pressure gradients are confined to the base of the snowpack and (2) the snow water pressure at higher levels is independent of depth and equal to a characteristic value called the gravity flow pressure, which is a function of the melt rate and wetting history of the snow. Simple and inexpensive tensiometers were used to measure the water pressure variations in a deep snowpack. Diurnal pressure changes were found to be about 300 N m−2 in amplitude within the ripe snow. Layering resulted in a scattering of the water pressures along the vertical direction. Such simple tensiometer measurements can now be used with the above derivation to provide field measurements of the permeability of different types of snow.

This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit: