TVCSnow 2018-2019 tundra snow depth probe measurements

• Main Authors: King, Joshua, Toose, Peter, Arvids Silis, Derksen, Chris
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Zenodo 2020
• Subjects: snow; tundra; snow depth; TVCSnow; magnaprobe; magna probe; Northwest Territories; Canada; Inuvik; Valley Creek; Trail Valley Creek; Sturm; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4021400; https://zenodo.org/record/4021400

Snow depth measurements were recorded as part of Environment and Climate Change Canada's 2018-2019 Trail Valley Creek Snow Experiment (TVCSnow 18/19). These snow depths were collected to evaluate coincident airborne and satellite radar measurements to better understand snow-radar interactions in a tundra environment. The snow depths were recorded 50 km north of the town of Inuvik, Northwest Territories. Three periods of measurement took place in November 2018, January 2019, and March 2019 in and around the Trail Valley Creek research station. The snow depth measurements were recorded with an automatic snow depth probe (magnaprobe). Open Government Licence - Canada (https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada) : A total of 21,466 measurements were collected in an open tundra environment during three field campaigns that took place November 12th-18th 2018 (6,185 depths), January 11th-20th 2019 (6,740 depths), and March 19th-27th 2019 (8,541 depths). Survey transects of several hundred meters were measured adjacent to excavated snow pits where manual and automated in situ snow measurements of density, specific surface area, snow grain and layering characteristics were recorded. The snow depth measurements were recorded using magnaprobes that can measure both depth and position simultaneously, patented in 1999 (United States Patent 5,864,059, 1999) and produced commercially by SnowHydro LLC. The nature of the substrate beneath the snow controls the snow depth vertical accuracy with errors ranging from near zero for hard bases to +5 cm of over-probe in soft vegetation and the horizontal positional accuracy is typically ±2.5 m using the onboard Wide Area Augmentation System enabled GPS (Sturm and Holmgren, 2018). A 2018 experiment within the same study region (unpublished), examined the level of over-probe in and around a single snow pit, documenting an average over-probe penetration of 7.6 cm (n=68). All magnaprobe measurements have undergone quality control with erroneous values removed. The snow depths have been organized into a comma de-limited file with six columns of information. 1. Timestamp: This is the GPS time stamp recorded simultaneously with the snow depth measurement in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Formatted as: m/d/yyyy h:mm. 2. Counter: this is the counter of the number of depths recorded since the unit was powered on. This provides an indication of the sequential order that the depths were recorded by a specific magnaprobe unit (multiple units were used during each campaign)at a particular site only. 3. DepthCm: This is the measured snow depth in centimetres 4. Latitude: This is the latitude measured in decimal degrees to six decimal places (WGS84) 5. Longitutde: This is the longitutde measured in decimal degrees to six decimal places (WGS84) 6. snow_pit: Each magna probe depth is associated with a snow pit ID to be used to link to other in situ snow survey measurements recorded in close proximity. References: Sturm M, Holmgren J. 2018. An automatic snow depth probe for field validation campaigns. Water Resources Research. 54: 9695-9701. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR023559