The Determination of the Snow Optical Grain Diameter and Snowmelt Area on the Greenland Ice Sheet Using Spaceborne Optical Observations
The optical diameter of the surface snow grains impacts the amount of energy absorbed by the surface and therefore the onset and magnitude of surface melt. Snow grains respond to surface heating through grain metamorphism and growth. During melt, liquid water between the grains markedly increases th...
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ftmdpi:oai:mdpi.com:/2072-4292/14/4/932/ 2023-08-20T04:06:49+02:00 The Determination of the Snow Optical Grain Diameter and Snowmelt Area on the Greenland Ice Sheet Using Spaceborne Optical Observations Baptiste Vandecrux Jason E. Box Adrien Wehrlé Alexander A. Kokhanovsky Ghislain Picard Masashi Niwano Maria Hörhold Anne-Katrine Faber Hans Christian Steen-Larsen agris 2022-02-15 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14040932 EN eng Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs14040932 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Remote Sensing; Volume 14; Issue 4; Pages: 932 Greenland ice sheet Sentinel-3 OLCI optical remote sensing snow optical grain diameter surface melt Text 2022 ftmdpi https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14040932 2023-08-01T04:09:54Z The optical diameter of the surface snow grains impacts the amount of energy absorbed by the surface and therefore the onset and magnitude of surface melt. Snow grains respond to surface heating through grain metamorphism and growth. During melt, liquid water between the grains markedly increases the optical grain size, as wet snow grain clusters are optically equivalent to large grains. We present daily surface snow grain optical diameters (dopt) retrieved from the Greenland ice sheet at 1 km resolution for 2017–2019 using observations from Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) onboard Sentinel-3A. The retrieved dopt are evaluated against 3 years of in situ measurements in Northeast Greenland. We show that higher dopt are indicative of surface melt as calculated from meteorological measurements at four PROMICE automatic weather stations. We deduce a threshold value of 0.64 mm in dopt allowing categorization of the days either as melting or nonmelting. We apply this simple melt detection technique in Northeast Greenland and compare the derived melting areas with the conventional passive microwave MEaSUREs melt flag for June 2019. The two flags show generally consistent evolution of the melt extent although we highlight areas where large grain diameters are strong indicators of melt but are missed by the MEaSUREs melt flag. While spatial resolution of the optical grain diameter-based melt flag is higher than passive microwave, it is hampered by clouds. Our retrieval remains suitable to study melt at a local to regional scales and could be in the future combined with passive microwave melt flags for increased coverage. Text Greenland Ice Sheet MDPI Open Access Publishing Greenland Remote Sensing 14 4 932 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
MDPI Open Access Publishing |
op_collection_id |
ftmdpi |
language |
English |
topic |
Greenland ice sheet Sentinel-3 OLCI optical remote sensing snow optical grain diameter surface melt |
spellingShingle |
Greenland ice sheet Sentinel-3 OLCI optical remote sensing snow optical grain diameter surface melt Baptiste Vandecrux Jason E. Box Adrien Wehrlé Alexander A. Kokhanovsky Ghislain Picard Masashi Niwano Maria Hörhold Anne-Katrine Faber Hans Christian Steen-Larsen The Determination of the Snow Optical Grain Diameter and Snowmelt Area on the Greenland Ice Sheet Using Spaceborne Optical Observations |
topic_facet |
Greenland ice sheet Sentinel-3 OLCI optical remote sensing snow optical grain diameter surface melt |
description |
The optical diameter of the surface snow grains impacts the amount of energy absorbed by the surface and therefore the onset and magnitude of surface melt. Snow grains respond to surface heating through grain metamorphism and growth. During melt, liquid water between the grains markedly increases the optical grain size, as wet snow grain clusters are optically equivalent to large grains. We present daily surface snow grain optical diameters (dopt) retrieved from the Greenland ice sheet at 1 km resolution for 2017–2019 using observations from Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) onboard Sentinel-3A. The retrieved dopt are evaluated against 3 years of in situ measurements in Northeast Greenland. We show that higher dopt are indicative of surface melt as calculated from meteorological measurements at four PROMICE automatic weather stations. We deduce a threshold value of 0.64 mm in dopt allowing categorization of the days either as melting or nonmelting. We apply this simple melt detection technique in Northeast Greenland and compare the derived melting areas with the conventional passive microwave MEaSUREs melt flag for June 2019. The two flags show generally consistent evolution of the melt extent although we highlight areas where large grain diameters are strong indicators of melt but are missed by the MEaSUREs melt flag. While spatial resolution of the optical grain diameter-based melt flag is higher than passive microwave, it is hampered by clouds. Our retrieval remains suitable to study melt at a local to regional scales and could be in the future combined with passive microwave melt flags for increased coverage. |
format |
Text |
author |
Baptiste Vandecrux Jason E. Box Adrien Wehrlé Alexander A. Kokhanovsky Ghislain Picard Masashi Niwano Maria Hörhold Anne-Katrine Faber Hans Christian Steen-Larsen |
author_facet |
Baptiste Vandecrux Jason E. Box Adrien Wehrlé Alexander A. Kokhanovsky Ghislain Picard Masashi Niwano Maria Hörhold Anne-Katrine Faber Hans Christian Steen-Larsen |
author_sort |
Baptiste Vandecrux |
title |
The Determination of the Snow Optical Grain Diameter and Snowmelt Area on the Greenland Ice Sheet Using Spaceborne Optical Observations |
title_short |
The Determination of the Snow Optical Grain Diameter and Snowmelt Area on the Greenland Ice Sheet Using Spaceborne Optical Observations |
title_full |
The Determination of the Snow Optical Grain Diameter and Snowmelt Area on the Greenland Ice Sheet Using Spaceborne Optical Observations |
title_fullStr |
The Determination of the Snow Optical Grain Diameter and Snowmelt Area on the Greenland Ice Sheet Using Spaceborne Optical Observations |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Determination of the Snow Optical Grain Diameter and Snowmelt Area on the Greenland Ice Sheet Using Spaceborne Optical Observations |
title_sort |
determination of the snow optical grain diameter and snowmelt area on the greenland ice sheet using spaceborne optical observations |
publisher |
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14040932 |
op_coverage |
agris |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
Greenland Ice Sheet |
genre_facet |
Greenland Ice Sheet |
op_source |
Remote Sensing; Volume 14; Issue 4; Pages: 932 |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs14040932 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14040932 |
container_title |
Remote Sensing |
container_volume |
14 |
container_issue |
4 |
container_start_page |
932 |
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1774718158232354816 |