A review on fiber Bragg grating sensors for measurement of snow surface temperature.

The on-going warming of climate affects the Indian Himalaya's cryosphere. It increases the risk of hazards caused by snow avalanches to the living creature and ecosystems. Snow avalanche is a downward flow of an unexpected amount of snow from hill top to the valley. A check can be put on snow avalanche by measuring the snow surface temperature (SST). Therefore, there is a need of thermal sensor system to be installed on high snow covered locations to monitor SST. The optical fiber sensors (OFS) could be a promising technology in these situations because OFS are light weighted, not prone to electromagnetic interference and easy to install. In OFS, the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based sensors has most suitable sensor systems for the measurement of low temperatures like SST. In this review paper, the eligible FBG based sensor systems have been discussed which can be installed to monitor the SST as well as the avalanche activities in the snow covered mountainous ranges. The bare FBG sensors do not respond efficiently at low temperatures, so bare FBG based sensor has been excluded from this study. Therefore, only the substrate coated FBG sensors, dual end fixed surface mounted and embedded sensors have been included in the review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]