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Dataset

 

ESA Snow Climate Change Initiative (Snow_cci): Daily global Snow Cover Fraction - viewable snow (SCFV) from MODIS (2000 - 2019), version 1.0

Update Frequency: Not Planned
Latest Data Update: 2021-03-26
Status: Superseded
Online Status: ONLINE
Publication State: Citable
Publication Date: 2021-05-10
DOI Publication Date: 2021-05-12
Download Stats: last 12 months
Dataset Size: 7.19K Files | 190GB

This dataset has been superseded. See Latest Version here
Abstract

This dataset contains Daily Snow Cover Fraction of viewable snow from the MODIS satellite instruments, produced by the Snow project of the ESA Climate Change Initiative programme.

Snow cover fraction viewable (SCFV) indicates the area of snow viewable from space over all land surfaces. In forested areas this refers to snow viewable on top of the forest canopy. The SCFV is given in percentage (%) per pixel.

The global SCFV product is available at about 1 km pixel size for all land areas, excluding Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets. The coastal zones of Greenland are included.

The SCFV time series provides daily products for the period 2000 – 2019.

The SCFV product is based on Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data on-board the Terra satellite.

The retrieval method of the snow_cci SCFV product from MODIS data has been further developed and improved based on the ESA GlobSnow approach described by Metsämäki et al. (2015) and complemented with a pre-classification module developed by ENVEO. For the SCFV product generation from MODIS, multiple reflective and emissive spectral bands are used. In a first step, clouds are masked using an adapted version of the Simple Cloud Detection Algorithm version 2.0 (SCDA2.0) (Metsämäki et al., 2015). All cloud free pixels are then used for the snow extent mapping, using spectral bands centred at about 550 nm and 1.6 µm, and an emissive band centred at about 11 µm. The snow_cci snow cover mapping algorithm is a two-step approach: first, a strict pre-classification is applied to identify all cloud free pixels which are certainly snow free. For all remaining pixels, the snow_cci SCFV retrieval method is applied. Improvements to the GlobSnow algorithm implemented for snow_cci version 1 include (i) the utilisation of a background reflectance map derived from statistical analyses of MODIS time series replacing the constant values for snow free ground used in the GlobSnow approach, and (ii) the adaptation of the retrieval method for mapping in forested areas the SCFV.

Permanent snow and ice, and water areas are masked based on the Land Cover CCI data set of the year 2000. Both classes were separately aggregated to the pixel spacing of the SCFV product. Water areas are masked if more than 30 percent of the pixel is classified as water, permanent snow and ice areas are masked if more than 50 percent are identified as such areas in the aggregated map. The product uncertainty for observed land pixels is provided as unbiased root mean square error (RMSE) per pixel in the ancillary variable.

The SCFV product is aimed to serve the needs for users working in the cryosphere and climate research and monitoring activities, including the detection of variability and trends, climate modelling and aspects of hydrology, meteorology, and biology.

ENVEO is responsible for the SCFV product development and generation from MODIS data, SYKE supported the development.

There are a few days without any MODIS acquisitions in the years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2016 and 2018. On several days in the years 2000 to 2006, and on a few days in the years 2012, 2015 and 2016, the acquired MODIS data have either only limited coverage, or some of the MODIS data were corrupted during the download process. For these days, the SCFV products are available but have data gaps.

Citable as:  Nagler, T.; Schwaizer, G.; Keuris, L.; Hetzenecker, M.; Metsämäki, S. (2021): ESA Snow Climate Change Initiative (Snow_cci): Daily global Snow Cover Fraction - viewable snow (SCFV) from MODIS (2000 - 2019), version 1.0. NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis, 12 May 2021. doi:10.5285/ef8eb5ff84994f2ca416dbb2df7f72c7. https://dx.doi.org/10.5285/ef8eb5ff84994f2ca416dbb2df7f72c7
Abbreviation: Not defined
Keywords: ESA, CCI, Snow, Snow Cover Fraction

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(s):
https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/licences/specific_licences/esacci_snow_terms_and_conditions.pdf
When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.
Data lineage:

The snow_cci SCFV products from MODIS are based on the MODIS/Terra Calibrated Radiances 5-Min L1B Swath 1km (MOD021KM) and the MODIS/Terra Geolocation Fields 5-Min L1A Swath 1km (MOD03) Collection 6.1 data sets, provided by NASA.

The snow_cci SCF processing chain for MODIS includes the masking of clouds, the identification of certainly snow free areas, and the classification of snow cover fraction per pixel for all remaining observed pixels. Finally, permanent snow and ice areas as well as water bodies are masked in the SCFV products based on the Land Cover CCI map of the year 2000. All SCFV products are prepared according to the CCI data standards.

An automated and a manual quality check was performed on the full time series.

We acknowledge Norsk Regnesentral (Norwegian Computing Center, NR) for downloading the MODIS data from NASA, and UNINETT Sigma2 AS (Sigma2, The Norwegian e-infrastructure for Research & Education) for providing the processing infrastructure for the CRDP generation from MODIS.

Data Quality:
The unbiased root mean square error of snow cover fraction adapted from the approach of Salminen et al. (2018) is added as an uncertainty layer in each product. The MODIS based SCFV products match the CCI data standards version 2.3, released in July 2021. For further information on the data quality, see the Snow_cci documentation..
File Format:
Data are netCDF formatted.

Citations: 1

The following citations have been automatically harvested from external sources associated with this resource where DOI tracking is possible. As such some citations may be missing from this list whilst others may not be accurate. Please contact the helpdesk to raise any issues to help refine these citation trackings.

Cui, G., Anderson, M. & Bales, R. (2023) Mapping of snow water equivalent by a deep-learning model assimilating snow observations. Journal of Hydrology 616, 128835. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128835 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128835

Process overview

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

Computation Element: 1

Title ESA Snow Climate Change Initiative: Derivation of SCFV MODIS v1 product.
Abstract The retrieval method of the snow_cci SCFV product from MODIS data has been further developed and improved based on the ESA GlobSnow approach described by Metsämäki et al. (2015) and complemented with a pre-classification module developed by ENVEO. For the SCFV product generation from MODIS, multiple reflective and emissive spectral bands are used. In a first step, clouds are masked using an adapted version of the Simple Cloud Detection Algorithm version 2.0 (SCDA2.0) (Metsämäki et al., 2015). All cloud free pixels are then used for the snow extent mapping, using spectral bands centred at about 550 nm and 1.6 µm, and an emissive band centred at about 11 µm. The snow_cci snow cover mapping algorithm is a two-step approach: first, a strict pre-classification is applied to identify all cloud free pixels which are certainly snow free. For all remaining pixels, the snow_cci SCFV retrieval method is applied. Improvements to the GlobSnow algorithm implemented for snow_cci version 1 include (i) the utilisation of a background reflectance map derived from statistical analyses of MODIS time series replacing the constant values for snow free ground used in the GlobSnow approach, and (ii) the adaptation of the retrieval method for mapping in forested areas the SCFV. Permanent snow and ice, and water areas are masked based on the Land Cover CCI data set of the year 2000. Both classes were separately aggregated to the pixel spacing of the SCFV product. Water areas are masked if more than 30 percent of the pixel is classified as water, permanent snow and ice areas are masked if more than 50 percent are identified as such areas in the aggregated map. The product uncertainty for observed land pixels is provided as unbiased root mean square error (RMSE) per pixel in the ancillary variable.
Input Description None
Output Description None
Software Reference None
Output Description

None

  • units: percent
  • long_name: Snow Cover Fraction Viewable
  • var_id: scfv
  • units: percent
  • long_name: Unbiased Root Mean Square Error for Snow Cover Fraction Viewable
  • var_id: scfv_unc
  • var_id: lat_bnds
  • var_id: lon_bnds
  • var_id: spatial_ref

Co-ordinate Variables

  • units: degrees_north
  • standard_name: latitude
  • var_id: lat
  • long_name: WGS84 latitude coordinates, center of pixel
  • units: degrees_east
  • standard_name: longitude
  • var_id: lon
  • long_name: WGS84 longitude coordinates, center of pixel
  • long_name: time
  • standard_name: time
  • var_id: time
Coverage
Temporal Range
Start time:
2000-02-24T00:00:00
End time:
2019-12-31T23:59:59
Geographic Extent

 
90.0000°
 
-180.0000°
 
180.0000°
 
-90.0000°