Benchmarking of snow water equivalent (SWE) products based on outcomes of the SnowPEx+ Intercomparison Project

Mudryk, Lawrence; Mortimer, Colleen; Derksen, Chris; Elias Chereque, Aleksandra; Kushner, Paul

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-201-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-201-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-201-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 1

Research article

|

17 Jan 2025

Research article |

| 17 Jan 2025

Benchmarking of snow water equivalent (SWE) products based on outcomes of the SnowPEx+ Intercomparison Project

Lawrence Mudryk, Colleen Mortimer, Chris Derksen, Aleksandra Elias Chereque, and Paul Kushner

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-201-2025-supplement

Data sets

Northern Hemisphere historical in-situ Snow Water Equivalent dataset (1979-2021) (Version 1) C. Mortimer and V. Vionnet https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10287093

B-TIM snow for ERA5 Aleksandra Elias Chereque https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/HHIRBU

B-TIM snow for JRA55 Aleksandra Elias Chereque https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/X5QJ3P

B-TIM snow for MERRA2 Aleksandra Elias Chereque https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/C5I5HN

Crocus-ERA5 daily snow product over the Northern Hemisphere at 0.25° resolution (Version 2023) B. Decharme and A. Barbu https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10943718

Crocus-ERA-Interim daily snow product over the Northern Hemisphere at 0.5° resolution B. Decharme https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10911538

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

ERA5-Land hourly data from 1950 to present J. Muñoz Sabater https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.e2161bac

GLDAS Catchment Land Surface Model L4 daily 0.25 x 0.25 degree GRACE-DA1 V2.2 B. Li et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/TXBMLX370XX8

GLDAS Noah Land Surface Model L4 3 hourly 0.25 x 0.25 degree V2.1 H. Beaudoing and M. Rodell https://doi.org/10.5067/E7TYRXPJKWOQ

GLDAS Catchment Land Surface Model L4 daily 0.25 x 0.25 degree V2.0 B. Li et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/LYHA9088MFWQ

GLDAS Noah Land Surface Model L4 3 hourly 0.25 x 0.25 degree V2.0 H. Beaudoing and M. Rodell https://doi.org/10.5067/342OHQM9AK6Q

JRA-55: Japanese 55-year Reanalysis, Daily 3-Hourly and 6-Hourly Data Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) https://doi.org/10.5065/D6HH6H41

ESA Snow Climate Change Initiative (Snow_cci): Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) level 3C daily global climate research data package (CRDP) (1979-2020) K. Luojus et al. https://doi.org/10.5285/4647cc9ad3c044439d6c643208d3c494

ESA Snow Climate Change Initiative (Snow_cci): Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) level 3C daily global climate research data package (CRDP) (1979-2018) K. Luojus et al. https://doi.org/10.5285/fa20aaa2060e40cabf5fedce7a9716d0

GlobSnow v3.0 snow water equivalent (SWE) K. Luojus et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.911944

Short summary

We evaluate and rank 23 different datasets on their ability to accurately estimate historical snow amounts. The evaluation uses new a set of surface snow measurements with improved spatial coverage, enabling evaluation across both mountainous and nonmountainous regions. Performance measures vary tremendously across the products: while most perform reasonably in nonmountainous regions, accurate representation of snow amounts in mountainous regions and of historical trends is much more variable.