Title
A Case Study Of Using A Multilayered Thermodynamical Snow Model For Radiance Assimilation
Abstract
A microwave radiance assimilation (RA) scheme for the retrieval of snow physical state variables requires a snow-pack physical model (SM) coupled to a radiative transfer model. In order to assimilate microwave brightness temperatures (Tbs) at horizontal polarization (h-pol), an SM capable of resolving melt-refreeze crusts is required. To date, it has not been shown whether an RA scheme is tractable with the large number of state variables present in such an SM or whether melt-refreeze crust densities can be estimated. In this paper, an RA scheme is presented using the CROCUS SM which is capable of resolving melt-refreeze crusts. We assimilated both vertical (v) and horizontal (h) Tbs at 18.7 and 36.5 GHz. We found that assimilating Tb at both h-pol and vertical polarization (v-pol) into CROCUS dramatically improved snow depth estimates, with a bias of 1.4 cm compared to -7.3 cm reported by previous studies. Assimilation of both h-pol and v-pol led to more accurate results than assimilation of v-pol alone. The snow water equivalent (SWE) bias of the RA scheme was 0.4 cm, while the bias of the SWE estimated by an empirical retrieval algorithm was -2.9 cm. Characterization of melt-refreeze crusts via an RA scheme is demonstrated here for the first time; the RA scheme correctly identified the location of melt-refreeze crusts observed in situ.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1109/TGRS.2011.2118761
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
Field
DocType
Assimilation, melt-refreeze crusts, radiance, snow, snowpack model (SM)
Brightness temperature,Remote sensing,Atmospheric radiative transfer codes,Data assimilation,Radiative transfer,Radiance,Snowpack,Brightness,Mathematics,Snow
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
49
8
0196-2892
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ally M. Toure111.41
Kalifa Goita2418.85
Alain Royer3398.71
Edward J. Kim45611.61
Michael Durand55111.61
Steven A. Margulis6153.17
H. Z. Lu701.01