Sentinel-1 time series for mapping snow cover depletion and timing of snowmelt in Arctic periglacial environments: case study from Zackenberg and Kobbefjord, Greenland

Buchelt, Sebastian; Skov, Kirstine; Rasmussen, Kerstin Krøier; Ullmann, Tobias

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-625-2022

Articles | Volume 16, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-625-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-625-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 2

Research article

|

18 Feb 2022

Research article |

| 18 Feb 2022

Sentinel-1 time series for mapping snow cover depletion and timing of snowmelt in Arctic periglacial environments: case study from Zackenberg and Kobbefjord, Greenland

Sebastian Buchelt, Kirstine Skov, Kerstin Krøier Rasmussen, and Tobias Ullmann

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-625-2022-supplement

Data sets

Copernicus {Sentinel} data 2017--18 Alaska Satellite Facility https://search.asf.alaska.edu/

Copernicus Open Access Hub ESA https://scihub.copernicus.eu/

The Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring (GEM) Database Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring Secretariat https://data.g-e-m.dk/

Short summary

In this paper, we present a threshold and a derivative approach using Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar time series to capture the small-scale heterogeneity of snow cover (SC) and snowmelt. Thereby, we can identify start of runoff and end of SC as well as perennial snow and SC extent during melt with high spatiotemporal resolution. Hence, our approach could support monitoring of distribution patterns and hydrological cascading effects of SC from the catchment scale to pan-Arctic observations.