Scale patterns of the Sentinel-1 SAR-based snow depth product compared with station measurements and airborne LiDAR observations

Ying, Jiajie; Yang, Jianwei; Jiang, Lingmei; Pan, Jinmei; Xiong, Chuan

doi:10.5194/tc-20-227-2026

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-227-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-227-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

Research article

|

14 Jan 2026

Research article |

| 14 Jan 2026

Scale patterns of the Sentinel-1 SAR-based snow depth product compared with station measurements and airborne LiDAR observations

Jiajie Ying, Jianwei Yang, Lingmei Jiang, Jinmei Pan, and Chuan Xiong

Data sets

Canadian historical Snow Water Equivalent dataset (CanSWE, 1928-2020) (Version v2) Vincent Vionnet et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5217044

Short summary

The Sentinel-1 C-band product (C-snow) has been widely used as reference data across various scales, but its reliability remains unknown. This study systematically evaluates its performance at 1, 10, and 25 km scales using ground-based measurements and airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data. Its performance varies with forest cover, topography, permanent ice, and wet snow. Errors increase with scale relative to stations but decrease compared with LiDAR observations.