Monthly Global Snow Depth Measurements From Satellite Microwave Sensor

GCOM-W/AMSR2 L3 Snow Depth provides monthly mean snow depth over global land surfaces at a 0.1-degree grid resolution. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) produces this dataset from the AMSR2 sensor onboard the GCOM-W satellite, launched in 2012. The dataset includes statistical parameters like mean snow depth, standard deviation, and data counts for each grid cell.

Use Cases

• Model regional snow water equivalent by integrating the Month Mean Snow Depth (SND) field with other geophysical data.
• Assess measurement reliability for a grid cell by comparing the Standard_Deviation and Average_Number fields.
• Analyze long-term trends in snow cover distribution using the monthly SND time series.
• Filter for high-confidence observations by using the Average_Number and Total_Number columns to identify pixels with sufficient valid samples.

Strengths

• Global land coverage at a consistent 0.1-degree spatial resolution.
• Includes quality metrics like Standard_Deviation, Average_Number, and Total_Number for each pixel.
• Data is derived from the AMSR2 sensor, which has 7 microwave bands and a 1450 km swath.

Limitations

• Excludes snow cover over sea ice surfaces, limiting polar region analysis.
• Temporal resolution is one month, which may miss rapid snowmelt or accumulation events.

Provenance

Source

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

Collection Method

Calculated from Level 1B and Level 2 inputs from the AMSR2 sensor; monthly means are arithmetic averages of daily statistical means.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Global land coverage