Physical and electrical characteristics of snow on sea ice: Implications for forward scattering model development

The authors quantify the vertical and seasonal characteristics of the geophysical and electrical properties of snow covers on landfast first-year and multiyear sea ice. Snow grain size, density, salinity, temperature and wetness were measured; the volume fractions of air, ice, brine, and the complex dielectric constant of the snow and sea ice were modelled over a cm vertical resolution spanning the seasonal periods from April to June. First-year sea ice snow covers (FYI´92 and FYI´93) showed that over the vertical dimension all variables depict a multilayer system. Deposition of a new snow cover (FYI´92) significantly altered the physical characteristics of the snow volume but not the dielectric properties. The basic vertical patterns observed in FYI´92 were also observed in FYI´93, except for the influence of the new snow layer of FYI´92. The pattern of physical and electrical characteristics for a multiyear sea ice snow cover were statistically different than an equivalent first-year ice case. Modelling of the snow grain area size characteristics can be done using a family of chi-square distributions with varying degrees of freedom