The Intercomparison of Snow Grain Size Measurements Workshop will take place from March 9-14, 2014 in Davos, Switzerland, and a follow-up workshop from August 4-5, 2014 in Reading, UK. It was motivated by the "IACS Snow Grain Size Workshop - Measurements and Applications" held April 2013 in Grenoble.
The workshop goal is to compare all currently used direct and indirect methods of measuring snow “grain size”. The following instruments are currently on our partial list to compare:
• Tomography
• BET adsorption methods
• Casting methods
• Stereology and sectioning
• Spectroscopic methods (e.g. using 1030 nm absorption feature)
• Near-infrared photography
• Direct optical methods (e.g. based on 1300 nm reflectance)
• High-resolution penetrometry (e.g. SnowMicroPen)
• Traditional grain size
The measurements will be conducted in the cold laboratories of the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF and on a dedicated field site near Davos. Homogenous snow samples will be prepared by the SLF.
There will be a follow-up workshop from August 4-5, 2014 in Reading, UK - detailed announcement will follow.