Snowdrift scheme in the Weather Research and Forecasting model

Wind-driven redistribution of snow is one of the key factors leading to heterogeneous accumulation of snow at small scales. Understanding these processes is, therefore, of great importance to many glaciological and hydrological questions. High-quality information on the wind field is necessary to realistically represent drifting snow. Here, we introduce a novel, intermediate-complexity drifting and blowing snow module for the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model that integrates seamlessly into the standard WRF infrastructure. The module also accounts for snow particle sublimation and considers the thermodynamic feedback on the atmospheric fields. The module was tested in an idealized model environment. The simple and computationally efficient implementation allows this module to be used for small-scale and large-scale simulations in polar and glaciated regions.