Preliminary results from SWESARR SnowEx Snow-off Flights
Abstract
Snow Water Equivalent, or SWE, the measurement of how much water is present as snow, is a very important parameter for water resource management and climate studies. One-sixth of the world's population (1.2 billion people) rely on seasonal snowpack and glaciers as a source of fresh water. In response to the need for improved measurements of SWE, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA Earth Science Technology Office funded SWESARR (SWE Synthetic Aperture Radar and Radiometer). SWESARR is an airborne instrument developed to collect microwave data for improving the SWE retrieval algorithms with the ultimate goal of delivering global SWE estimates through spaceborne measurements. SWESARR measures active and passive microwave signals using a high resolution and triple frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and a triple frequency radiometer. SWESARR's active SAR system operates in the X, Ku-Low, and Ku-High bands with bandwidths up to 200 MHz, and acquires data in two polarizations (VV, VH). SWESARR radiometer collects H-polarization data in X, K and Ka bands, with up to 1000 MHz bandwidth. Co-located active and passive measurements are made using an innovative feed and common reflector antenna that permits co-aligned beams at each frequency.
SWESARR collected its first data in December 2018. In November 2019, SWESARR will participate in a SnowEx campaign and will fly snow-off flights over Grand Mesa, CO. The SnowEx campaign is an initiative by the NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program (THP) to better characterize the performance of various snow sensors, and to identify optimum multi-sensor synergies and model assimilation for mapping the critical snowpack properties in future satellite missions. In this presentation, we will present preliminary results from these SWESARR flights.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.C33E1635O
- Keywords:
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- 0736 Snow;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0740 Snowmelt;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0758 Remote sensing;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 1863 Snow and ice;
- HYDROLOGY