Physical and electrical characteristics of snow on sea ice: Implications for forward scattering model development

The authors quantify the vertical and seasonal characteristics of the geophysical and electrical properties of snow covers on landfast first-year and multiyear sea ice. Snow grain size, density, salinity, temperature and wetness were measured; the volume fractions of air, ice, brine, and the complex dielectric constant of the snow and sea ice were modelled over a cm vertical resolution spanning the seasonal periods from April to June. First-year sea ice snow covers (FYI'92 and FYI'93) showed that over the vertical dimension all variables depict a multilayer system. Deposition of a new snow cover (FYI'92) significantly altered the physical characteristics of the snow volume but not the dielectric properties. The basic vertical patterns observed in FYI'92 were also observed in FYI'93, except for the influence of the new snow layer of FYI'92. The pattern of physical and electrical characteristics for a multiyear sea ice snow cover were statistically different than an equivalent first-year ice case. Modelling of the snow grain area size characteristics can be done using a family of chi-square distributions with varying degrees of freedom.