GPM OLYMPEX: Snow Depth and Atmospheric Measurements

Olympic Peninsula snow depth, temperature, and humidity data were collected from September 5, 2014, to August 20, 2016, with a primary focus on fall 2015 to spring 2016. Measurements come from snow poles, time-lapse cameras, sensors, and manual surveys as part of the GPM Ground Validation Olympic Mountain Experiment. The dataset includes analyzed netCDF files, hourly JPG images of snow poles, and manual survey results in an Excel file.

Use Cases

• Validating satellite-based snow water equivalent estimates using ground-truth snow depth measurements.
• Analyzing snow accumulation and melt patterns from time-lapse camera imagery of snow poles.
• Correlating atmospheric temperature and relative humidity with snowpack evolution.
• Calibrating airborne snow observatory data with manual snow survey results.

Strengths

• Provides multi-year, multi-instrument ground validation data from a defined field campaign (OLYMPEX).
• Includes complementary data types: hourly time-lapse imagery and manual survey data for specific overflight days.
• Collected by a authoritative organization (NASA) for satellite calibration purposes.

Limitations

• Incomplete metadata: column names, row counts, and exact file sizes are not provided in the sources.
• Conflicting last-update dates: one source lists 2016-07-26, another lists 2026-04-10, suggesting potential metadata inconsistency.
• Spatial scale is limited to specific study sites on the Olympic Peninsula.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected using snow depth poles, time-lapse cameras, temperature/relative humidity sensors, and manual snow surveys.

Time Range

September 5, 2014 to August 20, 2016

Freshness

2026-04-10 02:33:08.190953 (most recent update across platforms, though conflicting with an older date)

Geography

Olympic Peninsula, Pacific Northwest, United States