Effect of snow in cosmic ray variations and methods for taking it into consideration

This paper describes a method, which makes it possible to eliminate the effect of snow cover from the neutron component of secondary cosmic radiation. For many circumpolar, high-latitude, and mountain stations, where cosmic rays are continuously registered, it is exclusively important to take the presence of snow into consideration. Comparisons are made for manual and automated measurements, which are corrected for the snow effect based on the developed algorithm. The described method was tested for a number of cosmic ray stations where considerable snow masses are accumulated during the winter period near or above a detector: Magadan, Mount Hermon, Jungfraujoch, and Nain.