How Forward-Scattering Snow and Terrain Change the Alpine Radiation Balance With Application to Solar Panels

Rough terrain in mid- and high latitudes is often covered with highly reflective snow, giving rise to a very complex transfer of incident sunlight. In order to simplify the radiative transfer in weather and climate models, snow is generally treated as an isotropically reflecting material. We develop a new model of radiative transfer over mountainous terrain, which considers for the first time the forward scattering properties of snow. Combining ground-measured meteorological data and high resolution digital elevation models, we show that the forward scattering peak of snow leads to a strong local redistribution of incident terrain reflected radiation. In particular, the effect of multiple terrain reflections is enhanced. While local effects are large, area-wide albedo is only marginally decreased. In addition, we show that solar panels on snowy ground can clearly benefit from forward scattering, helping to maximize winter electricity production.