Meteorological conditions and snow-avalanche occurrence over three snow seasons (2017–2020) in Tasiapik Valley, Umiujaq, Nunavik
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this article, we study snow avalanche activity during the snow seasons of 2017–2020 using four automatic time-lapse cameras strategically positioned along the southwestern slope of Tasiapik Valley, near the village of Umiujaq, in Nunavik (northern Québec, Canada). Over the three snow seasons, cameras helped to detect evidence of 130 avalanche events, scattered over seventy-eight distinct avalanche days. The evolution of weather conditions prior to each avalanche release was detailed according to data from a nearby weather station. Moreover, the time of release, the release type, the surface texture, and whether rocky material was present in the deposits were documented from the photographs. To explore relationships between weather data and avalanche releases, conditional inference tree (CIT) analysis was conducted. Results of the CIT analysis showed that there are different weather patterns associated with avalanche releases depending on the season, and significant thresholds values were defined. In winter, the avalanche probability was greater when three-day snowfall total exceeded 10 cm. In spring, the avalanche probability was greater when cumulative melting degree-days were less than forty-six and when daily minimum air temperature was greater than 2°C. Moreover, cornice failures were found to be a major component of the avalanche dynamic in Tasiapik Valley, mainly because of the slope’s morphology. They have also been the cause of the three largest volume and longest runout avalanches observed by cameras in this study, highlighting potential risks for local communities. The probability of observing cornice failures is enhanced on days when maximum air temperature is greater than −8°C in winter conditions, whereas in spring conditions it is enhanced by daily maximum air temperature greater than 2.5°C. This study represents a necessary first step toward avalanche forecasting based on weather data in Nunavik. Efforts should be continued given the expected higher frequency of natural hazards in northern regions as a consequence of recent climate changes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".