Snow detectionfor flatland (snow mask) by VIS/NIR of AVHRR (H32), Effective snow cover by VIS/IR radiometry (H35) (using products from Jupyter notebook) - Part II
Semih Kuter and Burak Simsek introduce the H SAF snow detection products H32 and H35 derived from polar orbiter MetOp.
H35 is effective snow cover product, which is retrieved from optical imaging radiometer AVHRR mounted aboard NOAA and MetOP satellites. The third generation of AVHRR, i.e., AVHRR/3, is a multi-spectral scanning radiometer with three solar channels in the VIS/NIR region and three thermal infrared channels. It is currently onboard to NOAA-15, -18, -19 and MetOp-A, -B, -C satellites. The operational H35 is confined to the Northern Hemisphere The fractional snow cover (fSCA) value within a pixel is estimated by using the reflectance data obtained from AVHRR spectral bands. The final fSCA product has ~1 km spatial resolution and it incorporates snow cover fraction percentage from 0 to 100% as well as cloud and water classes. The product for flat/forested regions is generated by Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and the product for mountainous areas is generated by Turkish State Meteorological Service (TSMS). Both products, thereafter, are merged at FMI. A full disk H35 product is an image of 8,999 rows by 35,999 columns(i.e., 324 M pixels approximately).