Identification

Title

Comparison of snow data assimilation system with GPS reflectometry snow depth in the Western United States

Abstract

In this study, we compare gridded snow depth estimates from the Snow Data Assimilation System (SNODAS) with snow depth observations derived from GPS interferometric reflectometry (GPS-IR) from roughly 100 Plate Boundary Observatory sites in the Western United States spanning four water-years (2010-2013). Data from these sites are not assimilated by SNODAS; thus, GPS-IR measurements provide an independent data set to evaluate SNODAS. Our results indicate that at 80% of the sites, SNODAS and GPS-IR snow depth agree to better than 15-cm root mean square error, with correlation coefficients greater than 0.6. Significant differences are found between GPS-IR and SNODAS for sites that are distant from other point measurements, are located in complex terrain or are in areas with strong vegetation heterogeneities. GPS-IR estimates of snow depth are shown to provide useful error characterization of SNODAS products across much of the Western United States and may have potential as an additional data assimilation source that could help improve SNODAS estimates

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7ft8n61

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-05-15T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact