Factors Affecting Remotely Sensed MODIS Snow Cover Area Uncertainty
Abstract
Accurate knowledge of snow pack properties is important for short-term weather forecasts, climate change prediction, and hydrologic forecasting. As both the model predictions and passive microwave SWE observations contain large errors due to land surface complexities and temporally frequent snowmelt processes in the western United States, the 500m daily MODIS snow cover area (SCA) product has been widely used as an important constraint on snowpack processes in land surface and hydrological models. Snow pack is an integrated response to both climate and land surface complexity. Understanding and quantifying MODIS snow cover retrieval errors are critical for successful utilization of the MODIS SCA product. This study has made a thorough uncertainty assessment of the remotely-sensed MODIS snow cover product. We consider the MODIS SCA retrieval errors associate with climate and different land surface characteristics. For the first time, we demonstrate a relationship between the MODIS SCA retrieval errors and temperature. We extend this work by seeking relationships between the parameters of the error model and known sources of SCA error, such as landcover (e.g. forest versus grassland), forest fraction, and topographic roughness.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2007
- Bibcode:
- 2007AGUFM.H31A0133D
- Keywords:
-
- 1840 Hydrometeorology;
- 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218;
- 1631;
- 3322);
- 1855 Remote sensing (1640);
- 1863 Snow and ice (0736;
- 0738;
- 0776;
- 1827);
- 1873 Uncertainty assessment (3275)