6th Snow Science Winter School 2020

The 6th Snow Science Winter School will teach these modern techniques of snow measurements. The school consists of a field training complemented by theoretical lessons. It includes the practice with some of the state-of-the-art snow measurement techniques (specific surface area by reflection and spectroscopy, near-infrared photography, high-resolution penetrometry, micro-tomography, etc). Students will learn about how to characterize snow cover, what are the fundamental processes responsible for its evolution, and how does it interacts with the environment. For this edition, a special focus will be on snow in a changing climate, impact on human and nature.

Col du Lautaret

Target audience

Any graduate student or post-doc working on snow or in some snow related field, this year especially in climate change and impacts on human and nature, is welcome to participate. Those fields include everybody interested in cryospheric sciences.

Course structure

The focus of this school lies on alpine snowpack field measurements combined with theoretical lessons in the classroom. Students are supervised by a team of lecturers, experts in various snow-related fields and from different countries worldwide.

Field measurements will be done in small groups of 3-4 students. Each group of students will have to prepare a report describing the methods, results and interpretation of the data they will have collected over the week, in addition to other inputs that could be provided (modelling data for example).

The course corresponds to 3 ETCS-Points. The winter school is listed in the coursebook of the doctoral school at EPFL Lausanne. To receive full credit, a report taking 40 hours of homework must be handed in and will be evaluated.

Lecturers (preliminary)

– Marie Dumont (CNRM/CEN) - snow modeling
– Anna Kontu (FMI) - field measurements and remote sensing, Arctic snowpack
– Neige Calonne (CNRM/CEN) - snow microstructure
– Samuel Morin (CNRM/CEN) - snow in ski resorts, climate and social impacts
– Fabian Wolfsperger (SLF) - winter sport
– Henning Löwe (SLF) - snow physics
– Michaela Teich (BFW) - snow - vegetations interactions
– Alexandre Langlois (Univ. Sherbrooke) - in situ measurements

Deadline for registration: October 20, 2019

Practical information

– Date: 16-22 February 2020
– Location: Col du Lautaret, France
– More information

Updated on 30 August 2019