Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: . Liquid water movement through a snowpack, e.g. during rain-on-snow events or meltwater infiltration, is an essential process to understand runoff generation, flash floods, and snow avalanches. From a physical point of view, water infiltration into snow is a strongly coupled thermo-hydraulic problem with a thermal non-equilibrium between phases because the infiltrating water can be substantially warmer than the snowpack. Contrary to water infiltration into a frozen soil, the solid volume fraction is highly dynamic due to melting of snow and (re-)freezing of water. This work presents the first true multi-phase local thermal non-equilibrium model with variable volume fractions of all involved phases including the snowpack as solid porous matrix. While the possible value range of hydraulic, geometrical, and thermal parameters within a snowpack can be highly variable, the developed model is subsequently used to systematically study the effects of environmental conditions and parameters on the spatial distribution of melting and freezing within the snowpack. The model can be used to identify the formation of new ice layers due to refreezing as well as layers of enhanced melting.
Author: Thomas Heinze
Institution: Ruhr University Bochum
Language: English
Topic: Soil and Unsaturated Flow
Subfield: Civil and Structural Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,725
Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Award: G6691004912
OpenAlex ID: W4409734067