Articles | Volume 10, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2573-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2573-2016
Research article
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02 Nov 2016
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 02 Nov 2016

Seasonal evolution of the effective thermal conductivity of the snow and the soil in high Arctic herb tundra at Bylot Island, Canada

Florent Domine, Mathieu Barrere, and Denis Sarrazin

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AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment
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Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision
AR by Florent Dominé on behalf of the Authors (02 Sep 2016)  Author's response    Manuscript
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (06 Sep 2016) by Ross Brown
RR by Martin Schneebeli (19 Sep 2016)
ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (20 Sep 2016) by Ross Brown
AR by Florent Dominé on behalf of the Authors (06 Oct 2016)  Author's response    Manuscript
ED: Publish as is (12 Oct 2016) by Ross Brown
AR by Florent Dominé on behalf of the Authors (13 Oct 2016)  Author's response    Manuscript
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Short summary
The thermal conductivity (TC) of the snow and top soil greatly impacts the permafrost energy budget. We report the first winter-long monitoring of snow and soil TC in the high Arctic. The data and field observations show the formation of a highly insulating basal depth hoar layer overlaid by a more conductive wind slab. Detailed snow physics models developed for alpine snow cannot reproduce observations because they neglect the strong upward vertical water vapor flux prevailing in Arctic snow.