Validation of snow products - results and performances
Alexander Toniazzo discusses the validation of H SAF snow detection products.
Information on snow properties is of critical relevance for a wide range of scientific studies and operational applications, mainly for hydrological purposes. However, ground-based monitoring of snow dynamics is a challenging task, especially over complex topography and under harsh environmental conditions. Remote sensing is a powerful resource providing snow observations at a large scale.
In this session, the validation of the products will be discussed in detail. The presentation will begin with a brief recap on the various snow product types: snow detection, Snow status (D/W), Fractional SC and SWE. Some of these products are over European areas, whereas the new products developed during CDOP3 are global products of full disk satellite products.
Following there will be a short discussion about performances and limitations of each product, based on the Operational Reviews of the last years. Validation of these products requires a great effort due to sparse availability of snow observation, especially, over extra-European areas. Therefore, new validation strategies were developed.