Ten Years of SeaWinds on QuikSCAT for Snow Applications

The scatterometer SeaWinds on QuikSCAT provided regular measurements at Ku-band from 1999 to 2009. Although it was designed for ocean applications, it has been frequently used for the assessment of seasonal snowmelt patterns aside from other terrestrial applications such as ice cap monitoring, pheno...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote Sensing
Main Author: Annett Bartsch
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2010
Subjects:
Q
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3390/rs2041142
https://doaj.org/article/96a99a6f55f14463ba68beee4fc252be
Description
Summary:The scatterometer SeaWinds on QuikSCAT provided regular measurements at Ku-band from 1999 to 2009. Although it was designed for ocean applications, it has been frequently used for the assessment of seasonal snowmelt patterns aside from other terrestrial applications such as ice cap monitoring, phenology and urban mapping. This paper discusses general data characteristics of SeaWinds and reviews relevant change detection algorithms. Depending on the complexity of the method, parameters such as long-term noise and multiple event analyses were incorporated. Temporal averaging is a commonly accepted preprocessing step with consideration of diurnal, multi-day or seasonal averages.