Snow accumulation in alpine terrain is controlled by three main processes that act at different spatial scales: (i) orographic snowfall, (ii) preferential deposition of snowfall, and (iii) wind‐induced snow transport of deposited snow. The relative importance of these processes largely remains uncertain at small scale (10–100 m). This study presents how high‐resolution coupled snowpack/atmosphere simulations help quantifying the effects of these processes. The simulation system consists of the detailed snowpack model Crocus and the atmospheric model Meso‐NH used in Large Eddy Simulation mode. Dedicated routines allow the coupled system to explicitly simulate wind‐induced snow transport. Our case study is a snowfall event that occurred in February 2011 in the French Alps. Three nested domains at 450, 150 and 50 m grid spacing allow the model to simulate the complex 3D precipitation and wind fields down to fine scale. We firstly assess the ability of the coupled model to reproduce meteorological conditions during the event (wind speed and direction, snowfall amount, and blowing snow fluxes). The spatial variability of snowfall and snow accumulation is then considered. At 50 m grid spacing, snowfall presents local maxima associated with the formation of rimed snow aggregates and graupel in regions of sustained updrafts. Variograms show that the resultant spatial variability of snowfall is lower than the variability of snow accumulation when considering snow transport. Despite an overestimation of simulated blowing fluxes, our results suggest that wind‐induced snow transport is the main source of spatial variability of snow accumulation in our case study.

Abstract. In polar regions, sastrugi are a direct manifestation of drifting snow and form the main surface roughness elements. In turn, sastrugi alter the generation of atmospheric turbulence and thus modify the wind field and the aeolian snow mass fluxes. Little attention has been paid to these feedback processes, mainly because of experimental difficulties. As a result, most polar atmospheric models currently ignore sastrugi over snow-covered regions. This paper aims at quantifying the potential influence of sastrugi on the local wind field and on snow erosion over a sastrugi-covered snowfield in coastal Adélie Land, East Antarctica. We focus on two erosion events during which sastrugi responses to shifts in wind direction have been interpreted from temporal variations in drag and aeolian snow mass flux measurements during austral winter 2013. Using this data set, it is shown that (i) neutral stability, 10 m drag coefficient (C DN10 ) values are in the range of 1.3-1.5 × 10 −3 when the wind is well aligned with the sastrugi, (ii) as the wind shifts by only 20-30 • away from the streamlined direction, C DN10 increases (by 30-120 %) and the aeolian snow mass flux decreases (by 30-80 %), thereby reflecting the growing contribution of the sastrugi form drag to the total surface drag and its inhibiting effect on snow erosion, (iii) the timescale of sastrugi aerodynamic adjustment can be as short as 3 h for friction velocities greater than 1 m s −1 and during strong drifting snow conditions and (iv) knowing C DN10 is not sufficient to estimate the snow erosion flux that results from drag partitioning at the surface because C DN10 includes the contribution of the sastrugi form drag.

<p>Aeolian transport of particles occurs in many geophysical contexts such as wind-blown sand or snow drift and is governed by a myriad of physical mechanisms. Most of drifting particle are transported within de saltation layer and has been largely studied for cohesionless particles whether for snow or for sand. Thus, the theoretical description of aeolian transport has been greatly improved for the last decades. In contrast cohesive particles-air system have received much less attention and there remain many important physical issues to be addressed.  </p><p>        In the present study, the characteristics of drifting cohesive snow phenomena is investigated experimentally Several wind tunnel experiments were carried out in the Cryopsheric Environment simulator at Shinjo (Sato et al., 2001). Spatial distribution of wind velocity and the mass flux of drifting snow were measured simultaneously by an ultrasonic anemometer and a snow particle counter. The SPC measures the size of each particle passing through a sampling area. The size is classified into 32 classes between 50 and 500µm. Compacted snow was sifted on the floor. Then snow bed is left for a determined duration time to become cohesive by sintering.Two kinds of snow beds with different compression hardness were used (“hard snow” with a compression hardness of about 60 kPa and “semi hard snow” with a compression hardness of about 30 kPa). Wind tunnel velocity varied from 7 m/s to 15 m/s. Moreover steady snow drifting can be produced by seeding snow particles at a constant rate at the upwind of the test section. The results are compared with those obtained for loose surfaces. It was shown that :</p><p>- on hard snow cover, aerodynamic entrainment does not occur and saltating particles from the seeder just rebounded without splashing particles composing the snow surface (Kosugi et al.,2004). b, the inverse of the gradient of the mass flux decay with height is proportional to the friction velocity. The mass flux profiles exhibit a focus point. It is also confirmed (Kosugi et al., 2008) that the saltation height increased with increasing particle diameter throughout the full range of investigated wind tunnel velocity. Such characteristics are not observed for cohesionless snow particles (Sugiura et al.,1998)</p><p>-on semi hard snow cover, the inter-particle cohesion makes the transport unsteady and spatially inhomogeneous. A steady state is never obtained. It makes experimental protocol and experiments repeatability tricky. Without seeder, the same trends are observed compared to the previous experiments on hard snow. With seeder, the drifting snow flux dramatically increases, even for low wind speed, leading to snow cover vanish.</p>

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