World of Science | Review ISSW2018: Sessions Artificial Snow & Apps

This time: Snow making and ski resort managemet (Session 6) and snow products and services (Session 9). The session contributions matching the text are given in brackets. If there are longer articles on the individual topics, these are linked.

S6: Snow making and ski resort management

Tourists falling into crevasses, lifts breaking down, overcrowded parking lots - ski resorts have to deal with all kinds of potential problems and issues when it comes to day-to-day operations. However, the central challenges that they all have to deal with on an ongoing basis are derived from the industry's own dependence on weather and climate.

Sometimes it snows more, sometimes less, sometimes it's cold, sometimes not - the natural variability of the weather in general and winter precipitation in particular are not helpful if you want to offer guests a consistently high-quality product - good skiing conditions on the slopes.

Snow cannons became commonplace in the 1980s and today artificial snow is an integral part of ski operations. Then as now, the main purpose of artificial snow is to compensate for the variability of natural snowfall. Artificial snow is harder and easier to prepare than normal snow and less of it is needed to create a uniform slope (P6.16 Wolfsperger et al). Thanks to snow cannons, the slope conditions are therefore always (more or less) the same in many places. Stones or grass patches have become rare and when they do occur, guests, whose demands on the slopes have increased significantly since artificial snow became the norm, complain. Fortunately, there are now methods of monitoring the snow depth on the slopes using drones (P6.4 Pons et al.) - so the drone that collects stones can't be long in coming.

Given the importance of artificial snow for ski operations, it is not particularly surprising that lift operators are interested in optimizing the snowmaking process in terms of energy consumption and efficiency - and therefore costs - as much as possible. There are two approaches to this, one more practical and one more theoretical. The first is quickly summarized: You just try it out.

Artificial snow and climate change - studying and modelling sometimes makes sense

The more theoretical approach to finding optimization options for snowmaking is based on model calculations. In this respect, a large, currently ongoing project called PROSNOW (P6.11 Morin & Dubois) was strongly represented at the ISSW, which was held some time ago. The ambitious project goals are to improve weather and weather forecasts at a local level, tailored to the needs of the ski resorts, which should be better able to decide when to make snow. In addition, snowmaking and slope preparation will be integrated into snowpack models (Amundsen, Crocus, SNOWPACK/Alpine3D), which will be used to simulate snowpack development - including artificial snow - in some French test areas (O6.3 Hanzer et al.). Finally, the snow models will be partially linked to the weather models (O6.1 Carmagnola et al.). We will probably see the results at ISSW 2020 at the latest.

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Apart from specific problems relating to snowmaking, rising temperatures also lead to fundamental questions for some resorts - how many bad winters can we endure economically? Are the days of skiing and ski resorts numbered anyway in times of climate change?

This is also being investigated using model chains: a combination of snowpack models, which can also handle artificial snow, and climate models (in various scenarios) suggests that there will be enough cold periods in the French Alps at least until 2050 to make sufficient snow, but that water consumption will increase, partly for climatic reasons, but mainly because more ski resorts are expected to make more snow (O6.2 Spandre et al.)

In addition to the purely scientific considerations of artificial and natural snow, economic aspects were also discussed in some of the contributions to the ski resort management session:

Ski resorts are an important economic factor in many regions - no na ned, as the Tyrolean tourism expert says. Not only the turnover of ski resorts, but also that of restaurants and hotels fluctuates with the amount of snow, with bad winters having a greater negative impact than good winters, according to a study from the USA (O6.6 Hagenstad et al., P6.1 Gärber)

Summary Session 6 - Snow making and ski resort management

Artificial snow is important to compensate for capricious weather conditions, otherwise the Sattmann family will complain about poor slopes. Artificial snow and other forms of snow management (snow depots) are also increasingly being used to combat climate change symptoms. Nevertheless, rising temperatures are worrying everyone.

In two weeks' time, the session "Operational Remote Sensing" will continue.

Other

The meaning and purpose of a wearable system that is supposed to issue personalized, personality-based warnings when the skier gets into questionable situations, especially with regard to "human factors", seems a little more blurred. This system was still in the concept development phase at the time of the ISSW, but we are excited (O9.5 Prezenski et al.).

A mechatronics student from the University of Innsbruck presented his final thesis, in which he used a finite element model to calculate the influence of geometric and structural factors on the carving behavior of skis and snowboards. He also constructed a special test bench for this purpose, which can be used to bend skis and snowboards in the laboratory (P9.4 Caillaud).

In addition, a number of blasting-specific products were presented in this session, which presumably ensure that it goes BOOM better. Since I unfortunately have no idea about them, here are just the sounding names of the corresponding contributions:

• Safer Liquid Monopropellant for Low Velocity/High Energy Avalanche Charges: Initial Test Results, Application and Use Case (O9.2 Sawka et al.)

• An explosive delivery system implementation in the steep gullies at the araphoe basin ski area (O9.4 Evanczyk)

• S-LOAD avalanche blaster for the LM32 avalanche trigger (P9.5 Knobel)

Summary Session 9 - Snow products and services

Apps are handy and versatile, especially when you want to collect data out in the field and share it with other people in real time. Avalanche blasting is a mix of art, technology and science and needs specialty products that sound like action movies