Snowprofile measurements with a new method

Snow profile measurements in traditional way are time-consuming work. The excavation of a snow-pit, collecting measurements with several different instruments and writing a log of these values limits the amount of profiles that can be measured. The instrument concept presented here provides data with high vertical resolution without snow-pit excavations and very little disturbance to the natural state of the snow. These measurements take very little time making it possible to cover large geographical areas instead of a few selected snow-pit locations. The minimal disturbance caused provides a way to collect time-series of closely spaced profiles from snow in its natural state. This work presents the instrument concept and some early results on light extinction measurements with two incarnations of the protype instrument.