LLNL/Rescal-snow

Abstract

When wind blows over snow, it self-organizes. This forms surface features, such as ripples and dunes, that alter the reflectivity and thermal conductivity of the snow. These features have just begun to be studied by the snow and climate science communities (see 1, 2, 3 for recent work). We created rescal-snow to provide a highly capable snow dune modelling toolkit, to enable snow scientists to study snow features in controlled numerical experiments, and produce high-quality quantitative output. We hope that this model will be useful to researchers in snow science, geomorphology, and polar climate.