Designing an area-weighted tundra snow survey

Accurate snow cores do not guarantee an area-representative catchment estimate. This methods note synthesises snow-sampling evidence, Arctic snow reporting, and uncertainty principles to examine stratification and area weighting for tundra snow water equivalent. A fictional three-stratum catchment demonstrates how equal sample allocation can overrepresent deep drifts, while a small drift area can still contribute substantially to stored water. The note distinguishes weighting from representative selection and follows sampling, map-area, spatial-dependence, and survey-timing uncertainties. It considers how the next sample can improve the target estimate rather than merely enlarge a convenient route. No operational travel advice or real snow assessment is provided. The proposed reporting account includes terrain shares, class means, selection design, missing coverage, and the date represented, without treating storage as a runoff forecast.