Assessing Snowpack Water Equivalent Distribution in an Open Tundra Environment Using Various Scales of Passive Microwave Data
The areal extent and seasonal evolution of high latitude snow cover are important to quantify because they 1) influence the energy balance through changes in surface radiative properties, 2) control the ground thermal regime and vegetation dynamics, and 3) represent the amount of solid water storage...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2005
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.535.9752 http://www.easternsnow.org/proceedings/2005/rees.pdf |
| Summary: | The areal extent and seasonal evolution of high latitude snow cover are important to quantify because they 1) influence the energy balance through changes in surface radiative properties, 2) control the ground thermal regime and vegetation dynamics, and 3) represent the amount of solid water storage during winter. Open tundra is the most prevalent high latitude landscape throughout the northern hemisphere, yet the distribution and volume of snow across the expansive tundra is largely unknown. Increasing development in northern regions, combined with observed and forecasted changes to high latitude climate conditions reinforces the need for regional snow cover monitoring. However, the rugged terrain and remoteness of tundra regions limit the ability to collect in situ snow cover measurements. As a result, there is a lack of appropriate data for the comparison and validation of global and regional climate model simulations of snow cover and the water balance. The use of satellite passive microwave remote sensing is appealing across remote tundra regions as it can provide spatially continuous, temporally consistent and synoptically sensitive data. Passive microwave data have proven useful for estimating snow extent and snow water equivalent (SWE) (for example Chang et al., 1990), however, no operational passive microwave snow cover retrieval algorithms currently exist for the tundra environment. |
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