Testing remote sensing estimates of Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) in the framework of the European Drought Observatory (EDO)

We evaluated the feasibility of a snow drought monitoring for Europe based on the Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) satellite product from the Eumetsat Satellite Application Facility on Support to Operational Hydrology and Water Management (H-SAF). The reliability of this dataset is terms of both spatial coverage and detection of anomalies was evaluated against the consolidated benchmark dataset of the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC), as well as against the ERA5 reanalysis dataset from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The analysis confirms the difficulties of satellite products in capturing SWE dynamics over mountainous terrains, with the H-SAF product capturing only about 30% of the areas identified by CMC as interested by snow. Even if the ERA5 product better reproduces the spatial coverage over mountains, the correlation analysis between SWE anomalies highlights a substantial inconsistency among all three datasets. In the current status, the coarse spatial resolution (0.25 degree) of all the products seems to limit the accuracy of snow drought monitoring over key European regions such as the Alps.

CAMMALLERI Carmelo;  MARINHO FERREIRA BARBOSA Paulo;  VOGT Juergen; 

2022-02-01

SPIE-SOC PHOTO-OPTICAL INSTRUMENTATION ENGINEERS

JRC121907

1931-3195 (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC121907,   

10.1117/1.JRS.16.014509 (online),