Editorial: Pan-Arctic snow research

Seasonal snow cover plays a crucial role in Earth's energy budget. It affects glacier mass balance and hydrology cycle and fjord freshwater input, absorbs and scavenges a wide variety of gases and aerosols from the atmosphere, is a substrate for microbial communities and regulates plant and soil processes, in addition to impacting terrestrial fauna. Seasonal snowpacks are very sensitive to changing climate conditions. In the Arctic and in particular in the Svalbard archipelago, the seasonal snowpack covers ~60 to 100 % of the land between winter and summer. Changes in Arctic snowpack properties have been observed in the last decade in response to high-latitude warming and will likely continue in the future, with important anticipated effects on cryosphere environments. Multidisciplinary snow research, based on in-situ and remote observations, has become an important vehicle for studying the impact of climate change in the Arctic and the critical role snow has on it.