Snow properties evolution in a changing climate in Antarctica

The NIVO project is interested in the evolution of snow at and near the surface over time scales of hours to a few years, on the Antarctic plateau and in the coastal regions. The aim is to understand the role of snow in the Antarctic climate. The snow surface exchanges momentum, energy, and water vapor (with difference between isotopes) with the atmosphere which gives rise to numerous feedback loops involving many processes (radiative, aerodynamic, turbulent, …). To understand and parametrize these processes in snow and climate models, NIVO operates a set of automated instruments, collects manual measurements, and flies instruments on UAV platforms in order to characterize snow at the surface and in depth up to tens of meters. The main goal and challenges of the next four years is to investigate the melt dynamics in the coastal region around Cap Prudhomme and the evolution of the isotopic composition in winter at Dome C. NIVO also aims at providing essential data on snow microstructure and ice electromagnetic properties for the calibration/validation of satellite data which in turn allow u to generalize our findings obtained at the stations to the whole Antarctic continent.