Remote sensing data can provide images of snow covered areas and, therefore, it is possible to follow the time evolution of snow melting spatial patterns with increasing spatial and temporal resolution. Snow cover patterns are dominated by the complex interplay of topography, radiation forcings and atmospheric turbulent transfer processes. The snow cover evolution in an alpine basin in Trentino...

Boreal spring climate is uniquely susceptible to solar warming mechanisms because it has expansive snow cover and receives relatively strong insolation. Carbonaceous particles can influence snow coverage by warming the atmosphere, reducing surface-incident solar energy (dimming), and reducing snow reflectance after deposition (darkening). We apply a range of models and observations to explore i...

A technique of using satellite-derived data for constructing continuous snow characteristics fields for distributed snowmelt runoff simulation is presented. The satellite-derived data and the available ground-based meteorological measurements are incorporated in a physically based snowpack model. The snowpack model describes temporal changes of the snow depth, density and water equivalent (SWE)...

An evaluation of the Biosphere±Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS) snow submodel was conducted, both in a stand-alone mode and within the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate Model version 3 (CCM3). We evaluated, in the stand-alone mode, the performance of BATS parameterizations at local scales using ground-based observations from the former Soviet Union and fromMammo...

This paper describes a work plan for the evaluation of the capabilities and performance of Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) data for monitoring snow covered land surfaces, specifically in the boreal forest belt. The performance of MERIS over snow in the northern latitudes is mainly estimated by comparison of time series derived from MERIS surface reflectance against values derived...

This paper presents a study to demonstrate the potential of a spaceborne u-band scatterometer to monitor global snow cover. Global u-band data were acquired by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Scatterometer (NSCAT) operated on the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) from September 1996 to June 1997. NSCAT backscatter patterns over the northern hemisphere reveals b...

Snow-covered area (SCA) is a key variable in the Snowmelt-Runoff Model (SRM) and in other models for simulating discharge from snowmelt. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM + ) or Operational Land Imager (OLI) provide remotely sensed data at an appropriate spatial resolution for mapping SCA in small headwater basins, but the temporal resolution of the data is low and may...

With a decade scale record of global snow cover extent (SCE) at up to 500 m from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), dynamics can be mapped local scales. We developed daily frequency maps 2001–2020 using ~5 km resolution MODIS map. For each day year show for 20-year period on per-grid cell basis. Following other work develop products, we include spatial filtering reduce e...

One of the outstanding questions regarding the observed relationship between October Eurasian snow cover anomalies and the boreal winter northern annular mode (NAM) is what causes the multiple-week lag between positive Eurasian snow cover anomalies in October and the associated peak in Rossby wave activity flux from the troposphere to the stratosphere in December. This study explores the follow...

[1] In high latitudes, changes in climate impact fire regimes and snow cover duration, altering the surface albedo and the heating of the regional atmosphere. In the western Arctic, under four scenarios of future climate change and future fire regimes (2003–2100), we examined changes in surface albedo and the related changes in regional atmospheric heating due to: (1) vegetation changes followi...