C005-0003
Airborne observations from SWESARR SnowEx 2020

Monday, 7 December 2020
Poster
Batuhan Osmanoglu1, Ludovic Brucker2, Derek l Hudson1, Martin L Perrine3, Rafael F Rincon1, Adam J Warren4, Paul Racette1 and SWESARR Team, (1)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)NASA GSFC / GESTAR USRA, Cryospheric Sciences Lab., Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, United States, (4)Universities Space Research Association Greenbelt, Greenbelt, MD, United States
Abstract:
NASA initiated the SnowEx airborne campaigns during 2016-2017 winter with a field campaign in Colorado. SWESARR participated in SnowEx 2020 flight campaign over Grand Mesa, CO. The SnowEx campaign is an initiative by the NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program (THP) to better characterize the performance of various snow sensors and to identify optimum multi-sensor synergies and model assimilation for mapping the critical snowpack properties in future satellite missions.

Snow Water Equivalent (SWE), the measurement of how much water is present as snow, is a very important variable for water resource management, hydrological and climate studies. One-sixth of the world’s population (1.2 billion people) rely on seasonal snowpack and glaciers as a source of fresh water. In response to the need for improved measurements of SWE, NASA developed SWESARR (SWE Synthetic Aperture Radar and Radiometer) at the Goddard Space Flight Center. SWESARR is an airborne instrument designed to collect microwave data for improving the SWE retrieval algorithms with the ultimate goal of delivering global SWE estimates through spaceborne measurements. SWESARR measures active and passive microwave signals using a high-resolution and triple-frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and a triple-frequency radiometer. SWESARR’s active SAR system operates in the X, Ku-Low, and Ku-High bands with bandwidths up to 200 MHz and acquires data in two polarizations (VV, VH). SWESARR radiometer collects H-polarization data in X, K and Ka bands, with up to 1000 MHz bandwidth. Co-located active and passive measurements are made using an innovative feed and common reflector antenna that permits co-aligned beams at each frequency.

SWESARR measurements from SnowEx 2020 are currently being analyzed using the open-source Snow Microwave Radiative Transfer model. An intercomparison of forward model data, SWESARR's co-located active and passive measurements, and the available in-situ data from the SnowEx campaign will enable a robust characterization of the microwave response to snowpack properties. In this presentation, we will discuss preliminary results from these SWESARR flights.

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