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Dataset

 

European Space Agency (ESA) GlobSnow Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) v2.0 L3B Monthly Aggregated Maximum value data (1979-2013)

Update Frequency: Not Planned
Latest Data Update: 2015-06-05
Status: Completed
Online Status: ONLINE
Publication State: Published
Publication Date: 2015-11-21
Download Stats: last 12 months
Dataset Size: 327 Files | 2GB
Abstract

The ESA funded GlobSnow project produced snow water equivalent (SWE) monthly estimates for the Northern Hemisphere for the years 1979-2013.

SWE describes the amount of liquid water in the snow pack that would be formed if the snow pack was completely melted.

The monthly aggregate, a single product for each month, is calculated by determining the mean and the maximum of the weekly SWE samples. This dataset presents the monthly maximum value of SWE only.

The SWE product shall cover the Northern Hemisphere, excluding the mountainous areas, Greenland, the glaciers and snow on ice (lakes/seas/oceans).

The spatial resolution of the product is 25 km on EASE-grid projection.

Construction of the 30 years historical data set will be carried out using SMMR, SSM/I and SSMI/S data along with ground-based weather station data. The data are utilized for the different years as follows:

1979/09/11 - 1987/10/30 SMMR (Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer onboard Nimbus-7 satellite)
1987/11/01 - 2008/12/31 SSM/I (Special Sensor Microwave/Imager onboard the DMSP satellite series F8/F11/F13)
2009/01/01 - present SSM/I(S) (Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (Sounder) onboard the DMSP satellite series F17/F18/)

These data may be redistributed and used without restriction.

Citable as:  Luojus, K. (2015): European Space Agency (ESA) GlobSnow Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) v2.0 L3B Monthly Aggregated Maximum value data (1979-2013). Finnish Meteorological Institute, date of citation. https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/93bd163433a2430d841a77518d7a40e0
Abbreviation: esa-globsnow-v2.0-SWE-max-monthly
Keywords: esa, globsnow, swe, snow, climate, northern hemisphere, monthly

Details

Previous Info:
No news update for this record
Previously used record identifiers:
No related previous identifiers.
Access rules:
Public data: access to these data is available to both registered and non-registered users.
Use of these data is covered by the following licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.
Data lineage:

SWE Data provided by the FMI as part of the CLIPC project in 2015.
File Format:
The SWE products are distributed in NetCDF-4 classic format, following the CF-1.6 convention: a single file contains the data for a single variable on the date given in the file name.

Related Documents

 GlobSnow 2 Final Report
 GlobSnow2 Final Newsletter
 ESA Globsnow SWE webpage
 Basic Methodology: Jouni Pulliainen, Mapping of snow water equivalent and snow depth in boreal and sub-arctic zones by assimilating space-borne microwave radiometer data and ground-based observations, Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 101, Issue 2, 30 March 2006, Pages 257-269, ISSN 0034-4257, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2006.01.002.
 Snowmelt detection: M. Takala, J. Pulliainen, S. J. Metsamaki and J. T. Koskinen, "Detection of Snowmelt Using Spaceborne Microwave Radiometer Data in Eurasia From 1979 to 2007," in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 47, no. 9, pp. 2996-3007, Sept. 2009. doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2009.2018442
 Implementation: Matias Takala, Kari Luojus, Jouni Pulliainen, Chris Derksen, Juha Lemmetyinen, Juha-Petri Kärnä, Jarkko Koskinen, Bojan Bojkov, Estimating northern hemisphere snow water equivalent for climate research through assimilation of space-borne radiometer data and ground-based measurements, Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 115, Issue 12, 15 December 2011, Pages 3517-3529, ISSN 0034-4257, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2011.08.014.
 SWE Algorithm Theoretical Basis document

Process overview

This dataset was generated by a combination of instruments deployed on platforms and computations as detailed below.

Computation Element: 1

Title Computation for: GlobSnow Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) v2.0 L3B Monthly Aggregated Maximum value data
Abstract GlobSnow Snow Water Equivalent dataset combines space borne radiometer brightness temperature information with snow depth information from terrestrial weather station network to give an estimate about amount of water contained within a snow pack. These files contain a maximum value from GlobSnow SWE Weekly product calculated for each given month. The computational retrieval algorithm is complex, for more detailed information, please see accompanying documentation.
Input Description None
Output Description None
Software Reference None
Output Description

None
  • units: mm
  • standard_name: lwe_thickness_of_surface_snow_amount
  • long_name: Monthly Maximun Value of Snow Water Equivalet
  • var_id: SWE_max
  • units: degrees
  • var_id: lat
  • long_name: WGS84 latitude coordinates, center of pixel
  • units: degrees
  • var_id: lon
  • long_name: WGS84 longitude coordinates, center of pixel
  • var_id: lambert_azimuthal_equal_area
  • units: m
  • var_id: x
  • standard_name: projection_x_coordinate
  • long_name: x coordinate of projection
  • units: m
  • var_id: y
  • standard_name: projection_y_coordinate
  • long_name: y coordinate of projection

Co-ordinate Variables

Coverage
Temporal Range
Start time:
1979-09-30T23:00:00
End time:
2013-05-30T23:00:00
Geographic Extent

 
90.0000°
  
-180.0000°
  
180.0000°
 
0.0000°
  
Related parties
Authors (1)
Publishers (1)
Funders (1)
Principal Investigators (1)