Collaborative Research: Diagnosing the Impacts of Blowing Snow in the Northern Great Plains Using Novel Instrumentation and Coupled Models

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Blowing snow is a common wintertime hazard in the Northern Great Plains. While the general conditions responsible for the process are understood, recent observations have demonstrated that blowing snow and blizzard conditions can vary significantly in time and space. Forecasting these events is difficult; weather models do not include the process, meaning that forecasters are reliant on imperfect techniques to predict the hazard. Further, it is believed that blowing snow can modify the lower atmosphere suggesting that additional downstream errors in forecasts are possible. Besides these immediate impacts on society, blowing snow is a critical process in open, cold regions of the globe by impacting the distribution of water and energy at the Earth’s surface. Innovative observations are needed to better understand blowing snow and provide the ground truth needed to advance efforts to model the process. This collaborative project seeks to understand the physical mechanisms and impacts of blowing snow in the Northern Great Plains. The project will investigate the microphysical structure of blowing snow layers and the roles that terrain, atmospheric state, and sublimation have on the evolution of these events. Innovative observations will be made in and around eastern North Dakota/northwestern Minnesota, a region prone to blizzards and blowing snow events. The project will continue development of affordable, ground-based and balloon-borne microphysical imagers. Collectively with traditional radiosondes and vertically pointing lidars, observations will be used to evaluate and improve a fully coupled blowing snow parameterization within the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, and the improved model will be applied to identify the key aspects determining blowing snow behavior. Multiple graduate students and numerous undergraduate students will be impacted through field work, analysis of data, numerical modeling, and deployment of hydrometeor imagers to other academic institutions. The project will promote other public outreach efforts and includes partners such as state tribal colleges and the National Weather Service, ensuring dissemination of knowledge to diverse groups. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.