Temperature sensitivity of snow viscoplasticity: Evidence from controlled creep experiments
4 affiliations
- 1Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques (Toulouse, France)
- 2Météo-France (Toulouse, France)
- 3Université de Toulouse (Toulouse, France)
- 4Université Grenoble Alpes (Saint-Martin-d'Hères, France)
Abstract
Snow is a warm, porous material whose densification under its own weight is highly temperature-dependent. Despite decades of research, reported activation energies for snow viscoplasticity remain highly scattered, ranging from 40–600 kJ mol ⁻¹ . We quantified the temperature dependence of snow viscoplasticity using in-tomograph creep experiments with a newly developed thermo-mechanical cell. This design allows accurate load and temperature control, micrometric displacement measurement, and microstructural evolution monitoring via X-ray tomography. To disentangle microstructural evolution and temperature effects on the compression rate, we used a state-of-the-art viscoplastic model. We conducted five experiments on centimetre-scale samples of decomposing and fragmented precipitation particles with initial densities ranging from 278–320 kg m ⁻³ under an applied stress of 1.25 kPa. Each experiment comprised five temperature steps from −6 to −18 °C, each lasting one day, and resulted in a mean final vertical strain of 4 %. We show that the viscoplastic response is consistent with a two-regime Arrhenius law, with apparent activation energies Qh=126±6kJmol-1 for temperatures above -13±1°C and Ql=51±18kJmol-1 below. This temperature sensitivity matches that reported for polycrystalline ice but is greater than that used in detailed snowpack models.
Versions
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BibTeX
@article{vedrine2026temperature,
title = {{Temperature sensitivity of snow viscoplasticity: Evidence from controlled creep experiments}},
author = {Louis Védrine and Marius Brun and Mathis Bozon and Benoit Laurent and Pascal Hagenmuller},
journal = {The Cryosphere},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.5194/tc-20-5813-2026},
url = {https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/20/5813/2026/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Temperature sensitivity of snow viscoplasticity: Evidence from controlled creep experiments
AU - Louis Védrine
AU - Marius Brun
AU - Mathis Bozon
AU - Benoit Laurent
AU - Pascal Hagenmuller
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/12
JO - The Cryosphere
DO - 10.5194/tc-20-5813-2026
UR - https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/20/5813/2026/
AB - Snow is a warm, porous material whose densification under its own weight is highly temperature-dependent. Despite decades of research, reported activation energies for snow viscoplasticity remain highly scattered, ranging from 40–600 kJ mol ⁻¹ . We quantified the temperature dependence of snow viscoplasticity using in-tomograph creep experiments with a newly developed thermo-mechanical cell. This design allows accurate load and temperature control, micrometric displacement measurement, and microstructural evolution monitoring via X-ray tomography. To disentangle microstructural evolution and temperature effects on the compression rate, we used a state-of-the-art viscoplastic model. We conducted five experiments on centimetre-scale samples of decomposing and fragmented precipitation particles with initial densities ranging from 278–320 kg m ⁻³ under an applied stress of 1.25 kPa. Each experiment comprised five temperature steps from −6 to −18 °C, each lasting one day, and resulted in a mean final vertical strain of 4 %. We show that the viscoplastic response is consistent with a two-regime Arrhenius law, with apparent activation energies Qh=126±6kJmol-1 for temperatures above -13±1°C and Ql=51±18kJmol-1 below. This temperature sensitivity matches that reported for polycrystalline ice but is greater than that used in detailed snowpack models.
SN - 1994-0424
ER -