A Drifting and Blowing Snow Scheme in the Weather Research and Forecasting Model

Abstract

Abstract Wind‐driven redistribution of surface snow is one of the key factors leading to heterogeneous accumulation of snow at small scales. Understanding the processes that lead to this heterogeneous accumulation is, therefore, of great importance to many glaciological and hydrological questions. High‐quality information on the wind field is necessary to realistically represent drifting snow. Here, we introduce a novel, intermediate‐complexity drifting and blowing snow module for the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model that integrates seamlessly into the standard WRF infrastructure. The module also accounts for snow particle sublimation and considers the thermodynamic feedback on the atmospheric fields. In an idealized model environment the module was tested for physical consistency. Sensitivity experiments showed that drifting snow sublimation has on the one hand local effects on the erosion and deposition patterns and on the other hand non‐local effects on the larger‐scale atmosphere. The simple and computationally efficient implementation allows this module to be used for small‐scale and large‐scale simulations in polar and glaciated regions.

Keywords

• WRF
• snow drift
• model development
• glaciology