News: Snowfall Estimates

Snow Predictions: Satellites vs Ground-based Radars

Title: Intercomparison of snowfall estimates derived from the CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar and the ground based weather radar network over Sweden.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-5009-2015
Product tags: CPR, 2C-PRECIP-COLUMN, 2C-SNOW-PROFILE

CloudSat’s Cloud Profiling Radar (or CPR) is highly sensitive to light precipitation, like snow, allowing it to make valuable snowfall estimates for high latitude regions like Sweden. Sweden, on the other hand, has a series of ground-based radars that are calibrated with rain gauges, called Swerad, that provide useful estimates and can be used to compare how accurate and helpful CloudSat’s estimates are. Understanding and being able to predict snowfall is incredibly important, as studies have found that snow changes affect monsoons in distant places.

Swerad and CloudSat tend to disagree at large distances for different reasons, but both systems have distinct advantages, which could provide a fantastic data source if the two could be better used in synergy.

To learn more about how ground-based data differs from space data, and how CloudSat and Swerad are uniquely positioned to help each other, read the full article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-5009-2015

Synopsis Author: Kalina Velev, JPL