Abstracts for the 6th International GAME Conf.
3-5 December 2004
Kyoto Japan
A basic study on a new satellite algorithm for snow
H. Tsutsui (1), T. Koike (1), T. Graf (1), K. Tamagawa (1), H. Fujii (1)
(1) Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Tokyo
The climate conditions that exist in the various regions of the earth are formed by the water cycle on the scale of the earth on the land, atmosphere and ocean. In particular, the water cycle between the land and the atmosphere causes climate variations on the scale of the earth as a result of significant hydrological variations over both the long term and short term over the land. Over land, the various land surface conditions are formed by vegetation and snow. Moreover, compared with the ocean, the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the land are remarkable. Hence, it is difficult to grasp the hydrological variations of land in a quantitative way. Conversely, if we establish an earth-scale observation system for observing hydrological variations and grasp hydrological variations quantitatively, long-term fluctuations in predictions and short-term (seasonal and year-to-year) water resources management of global water resources will be possible.
Snow, which in the target of this study affects the hydrological conditions on the land surface as a result of its high reflectivity and heat balance. Moreover, snow significantly affects earth-scale climate variations. In order to quantify snow conditions, it is important for observation instruments to be arranged uniformly over the whole earth. However, this is unrealistic from the point of view of the observation scale.
Hence, the development of an all-weather snow observation method based on a satellite remote sensing that utilizes a high microwave observation technique becomes considerably important.
In this study, devised a new satellite algorithm, which automatically estimates the snow depth based on microwave transfer basis theory. And we evaluate the validity of this algorithm by comparison between the estimated snow depth and the observed snow depth using in-situ snow depth data in the northern hemisphere and the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observation System (AMSR-E) on Aqua launched by NASA in 2002.
Submittal Information
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Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Tokyo | |
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7-3-1,Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, JAPAN | |
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tsutsui@hydra.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp | |