Stereological determination of dry-snow parameters for discrete-scatterer microwave modeling

Modeling microwave back-scattering and emission from snow-packs requires the knowledge of snowpack characteristics and their dynamics to select an appropriate model. Both theory and field data show that microwave back-scattering coefficients and brightness temperatures are sensitive to parameters describing snow-microstructure. Stereological methods and other techniques can be applied to images of sections cut from undisturbed snow, and are used to obtain accurate and unbiased estimates of snow-microstructure parameters for discrete scatterer modeling. Assuming that the ice particle-size distribution can be characterized as a log-normal distribution function, we show that the parameters describing the distribution can be obtained from section images. The results show that, in addition to snow density and ice-particle size, the particle-size variation has great effect on dry-snow extinction properties. The optically equivalent ice-particle size for Rayleigh scattering in a snowpack with grain-size variations can be determined from the stereological measurements from snow sections.