Earth’s Cryosphere, 2017, Vol. XXI, No. 2, p. 10-20
SNOW COVER AS AN ELECTRODYNAMIC SYSTEM
N.A. Kazakov
Sakhalin Department of Far-Eastern Geological Institute, FEB RAS,
25, Gorkogo str., Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 693023, Russia; kazakovna@fegi.ru
The electrical properties of snow in Southern Sakhalin have been studied experimentally. The experiments show that the electric charge of an ice crystal depends on its microstructure and that of a snow layer as a whole depends on its structure and texture. The charge increases in snow subject to constructive metamorphism or recrystallization as ice crystals grow in size and become more perfect morphologically producing an ordered microstructure. The highest charges of crystals are from 0.0018 nK in faceted crystals to 0.008 nK in skeleton-type crystals. The specific electric charge is from 0.001 nK for new precipitation snow to 0.17 nK for recrystallized snow composed of faceted, skeleton-type and sectorial crystals. Ice crystals placed between two flat electrodes in the artificial electric field form vertical clusters similar to those in columnar and fibrous snow. They act as dielectric dipoles and surface charge dividers. A natural snowpack can be described as a flat dielectric waveguide in the electric field of the “atmosphere–lithosphere” system, i.e. as an electrodynamic system.
Snow structure and texture, snowpack, snow layer, ice crystal, electric charge