Evaluation and uncertainty estimation of the latest radar and satellite snowfall products using SNOTEL measurements over mountainous regions in western United States

Yixin Wen, Ali Behrangi, Bjorn Lambrigtsen, Pierre Emmanuel Kirstetter

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

34 Scopus citations

Abstract

Snow contributes to regional and global water budgets, and is of critical importance to water resources management and our society. Along with advancement in remote sensing tools and techniques to retrieve snowfall, verification and refinement of these estimates need to be performed using ground-validation datasets. A comprehensive evaluation of the Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor (MRMS) snowfall products and Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) (IMERG) precipitation products is conducted using the Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) daily precipitation and Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) datasets. Severe underestimations are found in both radar and satellite products. Comparisons are conducted as functions of air temperature, snowfall intensity, and radar beam height, in hopes of resolving the discrepancies between measurements by remote sensing and gauge, and finally developing better snowfall retrieval algorithms in the future.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number904
JournalRemote Sensing
Volume8
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • GPM
  • QPE
  • SWE
  • Weather radar

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Earth and Planetary Sciences

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