Automated Monitoring of Snow Cover over North America with Multispectral Satellite Data

Abstract
Current National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operational global- and continental-scale snow cover maps are produced interactively by visual analysis of satellite imagery. This snow product is subjective, and its preparation requires a substantial daily human effort. The primary objective of the current study was to develop an automated system that could provide NOAA analysts with a first-guess snow cover map and thus to reduce the human labor in the daily snow cover analysis. The proposed system uses a combination of observations in the visible, midinfrared, and infrared made by the Imager instrument aboard Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) and microwave observations of the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) aboard the polar-orbiting Defense Meteorological Satellite Program platform. The devised technique was applied to satellite data for mapping snow cover for the North American continent during the winter season of 1998/99. To assess the system per... Abstract Current National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operational global- and continental-scale snow cover maps are produced interactively by visual analysis of satellite imagery. This snow product is subjective, and its preparation requires a substantial daily human effort. The primary objective of the current study was to develop an automated system that could provide NOAA analysts with a first-guess snow cover map and thus to reduce the human labor in the daily snow cover analysis. The proposed system uses a combination of observations in the visible, midinfrared, and infrared made by the Imager instrument aboard Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) and microwave observations of the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) aboard the polar-orbiting Defense Meteorological Satellite Program platform. The devised technique was applied to satellite data for mapping snow cover for the North American continent during the winter season of 1998/99. To assess the system per...

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