H SAF Snow products, Quality Assessment and case studies
Overview on the H SAF satellite derived snow products.
Reliable snow cover extent is of vital importance to have a comprehensive understanding for present and future climate, hydrological, and ecological dynamics. Development of methodologies to obtain reliable snow cover information by means of optical and microwave remote sensing (RS) has long been one of the most active research topics of the RS community. Operational snow products namely H10 (Snow detection (snow mask) by VIS/IR radiometry), H11 (dry/wet by MW radiometry), H12 (Effective snow cover by VIS/IR radiometry AVHRR), H13 (Snow Water Equivalent(SWE)by MW radiometry), H31 (Snow detection by VIS/IR radiometry), H32 (Effective snow cover by VIS/IR radiometry AVHRR) have been developed since 2008 within HSAF. Considering different characteristics of snow for mountainous and flat areas, various algorithms are used in producing the snow products for flat and mountainous areas, and then the products are merged to have a single snow product. The development of new snow products is in progress. The presentation will provide an overview of existing and future operational satellite-derived snow products of H SAF portfolio. In the last part of the presentation, there will be a short introduction of quality assessment. After a brief recap of all available operational and pre-operational products, the performances of the products and the new validation strategy using high-resolution satellite data will be discussed, with some interesting case studies of the latter.
Lecture slides (Arslan and Akyurek)...