The Cold Climate Container is a unique modular laboratory facility and workshop designed to simulate atmospheric, hydrological and biological processes at high latitudes. The 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. https://www.mn.uio.no/geo/english/research/about/infrastructure/facilities/workshops/geosciences/climate-container/index.html
Hydropower has a significant role in Norwegian energy system, which deliver green energy to the societies. Snow is the largest reservoir in many hydropower systems. This snow reservoir is leaking water to the air by the process known as sublimation, that is the direct loss of snow to the atmosphere due to phase transition of snow to water vapor. Snow that sublimates is lost from hydropower production. But what is the actual amount of “lost snow”? To answer this question SnowSub project https://www.mn.uio.no/geo/english/research/projects/snowsub/ is integrating different level of knowledge: from field campaigns, hydrological simulations and laboratory experiments.
Process level experiments in the Cold Climate Container will be used to characterise sublimation under controlled conditions. The sublimation experiments will be conducted in the sublimation box installed in the Container, which consist of wind tunnel resting on the box filled with nature-identical snow.
The aim of the project is to study snow sublimation in the wind tunnel. The laboratory allows control of various conditions, such as temperature, wind speed and humidity important for sublimation/deposition processes.
To achieve the project aim, the student will:
- Run experiments in the sublimation box, manipulating conditions and testing out various hypothesis
- Test different sensor configurations and snow properties
- Analyse and interpret data
