Scaling laws for snow dunes

Snow bedforms cover around 8% of the world, mainly on Greenland and Antarctica. Despite being more widespread than sand dunes but have not been the subject of as much research. In the recent years there have been increasing interests in snow bedforms due to their impact on climate. To incorporate snow bedforms in climate models we need to quantitatively understand how they move and grow.

We analyzed types of bedforms and their progression through time, using time-lapse imagery which will be presented in the ‘Bedforms and Blizzards on Niwot Ridge’ talk at this symposium. We created the first scaling laws for snow dune and ripple growth and movement. We compared them to the scaling laws for sand dunes and ripples. The end goal is to create a dynamic model for snow bedform growth over a function of time using velocities and wind speeds that takes the temperature and weather into consideration. These results will be helpful for climate scientist, geologists, and geomorphologists.