The Cold Climate Container

The Cold Climate Container is a new laboratory and workshop facility from with origin in the LATICE research environment. The temperature controlled container has advanced instrumentation for studying ice formation and generating artificial snow that mimics a range of natural snowfall properties (e.g. habits). The lab allows for long-term experiments investigating how ecosystems respond to varying temperatures and snow covers. The Cold Climate Container is in use at different research projects at University of Oslo.

Figure1: A picture showing the scetch of the SnowMaker-instrument. — **Figure 1:** *SnowMaker-sketch:* Air with temperature of cold room Tair flow through fan on top of the heated water with Twater and further through channel to nucleation chamber, where snow crystals grow on nylon wires, while the supersaturated air moves up and cools down. The nucleation wires are rotated to avoid growing from only one side. The snow is collected into the harvesting box by shaking the wires with vibration motor. The harvesting box is settled on the rails and can be moved to further experimental setups with minimal disturbance of the snow. The box can be filled with snow in 1-2 days, allowing for larger scale experiments. Figure: CCC-lab Team

About the Cold Climate Container and studies of snow

The Cold Climate Container is a modular temperature controlled laboratory facility which allows investigation of snow processes with nature-identical snow, produced using the SnowMaker within the facility or snow, collected during field campaigns.

The SnowMaker in the lab is a modification of a machine described in Schleef et al. 2014. An improved machine to produce nature-identical snow in the laboratory, J. of Glaciology, V60, N219. doi: 10.3189/2014JoG13J118.

All of the snow study instruments in the lab are installed in a modular container. The container has two rooms, an operator room and a cold room. The cold room thermostat can set the temperature in the container between -40 ℃ … + 20 ℃.

The aluminium plate instrumentation in the Cold Climate Container Laboratory and work shop. Photo: CCC-lab Team — The aluminum plate instrumentation in the Cold Climate Container. Photo: CCC-lab Team

In addition to the aforementioned SnowMaker, the cold room is equipped with an aluminum plate (see photo), which is designed to accurately control the surface temperature of snow and soil involved in the ongoing experiments. There is also the fluid circulation unit with two separate devices, which produces cooling liquid for the aluminum plate or other experimental setups.

About the infrastructure

More detailed information about and specifications of instrumentation (and services) of the Cold Climate Container at Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo is found on the webpage for the infrastructure:

The Cold Climate Container

Published Mar. 20, 2023 12:10 PM - Last modified Mar. 20, 2023 1:17 PM