Title
An Assessment of the Applicability of Three Reanalysis Snow Density Datasets Over China Using Ground Observations
Abstract
Snow density is an important variable in snowpack research. The comprehensive applicability evaluation of the snow density datasets is a prerequisite of these datasets for their applications in hydrology processes and climate change, as well as in snow equivalent water retrieval algorithms. In this letter, the applicability of three snow density datasets, including European ReAnalysis (ERA)-Interim, ERA5, and the newly released ERA5-Land datasets, was first assessed using two ground evaluation datasets with different land covers from seven snow survey courses and four densely sampled networks in China. The results show that the ERA-Interim dataset significantly overestimates snow density during the entire snow season, with an overall root mean square error (RMSE) larger than 112 kg/m3, and lacks temporal dynamics. The ERA5 and ERA5-Land datasets are generally in good agreement with the ground measurements in China. The averaged RMSEs of the ERA5 dataset are 56.2 kg/m3 against snow course sites and 28.3 kg/m3 versus the densely sampled measurements, and those of the ERA5-Land dataset are 56.6 and 28.4 kg/m3, respectively. However, the ERA5 and ERA5-Land datasets still underestimate snow density over time, especially for the middle and late snow seasons. These new findings are expected to provide valuable feedback to model developers to further enhance the accuracy of snow density datasets.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1109/LGRS.2022.3202897
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Correlation coefficient, Hydrology, Climate change, Density measurement, Snow, Geoscience and remote sensing, Europe, China, European ReAnalysis (ERA)-Interim, ERA5, ERA5-Land, evaluation, ground measurements, snow density
Journal
19
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
1545-598X
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
9
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Shuo Gao101.35
Zhen Li23319.87
Ping Zhang300.68
Jiangyuan Zeng401.69
Quan Chen532.91
Changjun Zhao600.68
Chang Liu7571117.41
Zhipeng Wu800.34
Haiwei Qiao900.34