Retrieval of snow and soil properties for forward radiative transfer modeling of airborne Ku-band SAR to estimate snow water equivalent: the Trail Valley Creek 2018/19 snow experiment

Montpetit, Benoit; King, Joshua; Meloche, Julien; Derksen, Chris; Siqueira, Paul; Adam, J. Max; Toose, Peter; Brady, Mike; Wendleder, Anna; Vionnet, Vincent; Leroux, Nicolas R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3857-2024

Articles | Volume 18, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3857-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3857-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 8

Research article

|

28 Aug 2024

Research article |

| 28 Aug 2024

Retrieval of snow and soil properties for forward radiative transfer modeling of airborne Ku-band SAR to estimate snow water equivalent: the Trail Valley Creek 2018/19 snow experiment

Benoit Montpetit, Joshua King, Julien Meloche, Chris Derksen, Paul Siqueira, J. Max Adam, Peter Toose, Mike Brady, Anna Wendleder, Vincent Vionnet, and Nicolas R. Leroux

Data sets

TVC Experiment 2018/19: Snow field measurements B. Montpetit et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10794207

TVC Experiment 2018/19: TerraSAR-X backscatter data B. Montpetit et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10794868

TVC Experiment 2018/19: UMass Airborne Ku-Band SAR data B. Montpetit et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10794918

TVC Experiment 2018/19: LiDAR processed soil roughness B. Montpetit et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10794980

TVC Experiment 2018/19: Radarsat-2 backscatter data B. Montpetit et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10794954

Model code and software

ECCCBen/TVCExp18-19: TVC Experiment 2018/19 (0.0.0) B. Montpetit and M. Brady https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12750470

Short summary

This paper validates the use of free open-source models to link distributed snow measurements to radar measurements in the Canadian Arctic. Using multiple radar sensors, we can decouple the soil from the snow contribution. We then retrieve the "microwave snow grain size" to characterize the interaction between the snow mass and the radar signal. This work supports future satellite mission development to retrieve snow mass information such as the future Canadian Terrestrial Snow Mass Mission.