Inter-Annual Comparison of Satellite Passive Microwave Data with Ground based Radiometric Measurements

The snowpack properties greatly affect the climate and environment of planet Earth. For example, in high mountain ranges and other cold places, snowpack builds up in the winter and melts in the spring and summer. However, some place receive more rain instead of snow due to the increasing warmth of Earth, therefore the snowpack won't be as deep. The properties of a snowpack are density, depth, grain size, temperature, melting-refreezing cycles, surface wetness and vegetation. The comprehension of snow properties and snow seasonal variations provide useful information for various hydrological and meteorological applications. Snow is one of the many factors that take a significantly role in the seasonal flooding and water resource management. For this reason, accurate information of snow characteristics is required to increase the accuracy of hydrological forecast. The objective of this long term field experiment was to improve understanding of the effect of changing snow characteristics (grain size, density, temperature) under various meteorological conditions on the microwave emission of snow and hence to improve retrievals of snow cover properties from satellite observations. In this presentation, inter-annual comparison of satellite passive microwave data with ground based radiometric measurements; with the objective of understand the effect of wet snow on microwave emission will be presented. Furthermore, this study concentrates on increasing the accuracy of the models during the melting and refreezing period.