Abstract. Blowing snow transport has considerable impact on the hydrological cycle in alpine regions both through the redistribution of the seasonal snowpack and through sublimation back into the atmosphere. Alpine energy and mass balances are typically modeled with time-averaged approximations of sensible and latent heat fluxes. This oversimplifies nonstationary turbulent mixing in complex terrain and may overlook important exchange processes for hydrometeorological prediction. To determine if specific turbulent motions are responsible for warm- and dry-air advection during blowing snow events, quadrant analysis and variable interval time averaging was used to investigate turbulent time series from the Fortress Mountain Snow Laboratory alpine study site in the Canadian Rockies, Alberta, Canada, during the winter of 2015–2016. By analyzing wind velocity and sonic temperature time series with concurrent blowing snow, such turbulent motions were found to supply substantial sensible heat to near-surface wind flows. These motions were responsible for temperature fluctuations of up to 1 ∘C, a considerable change for energy balance estimation. A simple scaling relationship was derived that related the frequency of dominant downdraft and updraft events to their duration and local variance. This allows for the first parameterization of entrained or advected energy for time-averaged representations of blowing snow sublimation and suggests that advection can strongly reduce thermodynamic feedbacks between blowing snow sublimation and the near-surface atmosphere. The downdraft and updraft scaling relationship described herein provides a significant step towards a more physically based blowing snow sublimation model with more realistic mixing of atmospheric heat. Additionally, calculations of return frequencies and event durations provide a field-measurement context for recent findings of nonstationarity impacts on sublimation rates.

Abstract Blowing snow particle transport responds to wind motions across many length and time scales. This coupling is nonlinear by nature and complicated in atmospheric flows where eddies of many sizes are superimposed. In mountainous terrain, wind flow descriptions are further complicated by topographically influenced or enhanced flows. To improve the current understanding and modeling of blowing snow transport in complex terrain, statistically significant timing and frequencies of wind–snow coupling were identified in high-frequency observations of surface blowing snow and near-surface turbulence from a mountain field site in the Canadian Rockies. Investigation of the mechanisms influencing near-surface, high-frequency turbulence and snow concentration fluctuations provided strong evidence for amplitude modulation from large-scale motions. The large-scale atmospheric motions modulating near-surface turbulence and snow transport were then compared to specific quadrant analysis structures recently identified as relevant for outdoor blowing snow transport. The results suggest that large atmospheric structures modulate the amplitude of high-frequency turbulence and modify turbulence statistics typically used to model blowing snow. Additionally, blowing snow was preferentially redistributed under the footprint of these same sweep motions, with both low- and high-frequency coherence increasing in their presence.

While turbulent bursts are considered critical for blowing-snow transport and initiation, the interaction of the airflow with the snow surface is not fully understood. To better characterize the coupling of turbulent structures and blowing-snow transport, observations collected in natural environments at the necessary high-resolution time scales are needed. To address this, high-frequency measurements of turbulence, blowing-snow density and particle velocity were made in the Canadian Rockies. During blowing-snow storms, modified variable-interval time averaging enabled identification of periods of near-surface blowing-snow coupling with shear-stress-producing motions in the lowest 2 m of the atmospheric surface layer. The identification of those turbulent motions responsible for blowing snow yields a better understanding of the event-driven mechanics of initiation and sustained transport. The type of coherent structures generating the Reynolds stress are just as important as the magnitude of the Reynolds stress in initiating and sustaining near-surface blowing snow. Our results suggest that blowing-snow models driven by merely the time-averaged shear stress lack physical realism in the near-surface region. The next phase of the development of blowing-snow models should incorporate parametrizations of coherent turbulent structures.