Light-Absorbing Particles in Snow and Ice: A Brief Journey Across Latitudes

Worldwide, snow and ice can be polluted with impurities also referred as Light-Absorbing Particles (LAPs). In this chapter, we review the different processes occurring at middle latitudes, tropical areas, and polar regions. We show that snow and ice albedo reduction due to LAPs deposition or resurfacing is a global phenomenon with regional characteristics. Later in the chapter, we provide a classification of LAPs based on their optical features. We divided LAPs in non-carbonaceous (mineral dust) and carbonaceous (biogenic particles and cryoconite), and we created a set of radiative transfer simulations for each category. Lastly, we described different observation approaches for studying LAPs impact on snow and ice. We divided these methods in proximal (field spectroscopy) and remote (aerial surveys and satellite data) sensing. We expect that the study of LAPs in snow and ice will grow in the future, and more data and models will be developed in order to describe the hydrological and climatic effect of LAPs in the cryosphere.