Articles | Volume 20, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-3051-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-3051-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
26 May 2026
Research article |
| 26 May 2026
| 26 May 2026
Improved workflow for customized ICESat-2 ATL06 elevations captures seasonal mountain snow depths at sub-kilometer scale
Karina Zikan
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Department of Geosciences, Boise State University, Boise ID, USA
Ellyn M. Enderlin
Department of Geosciences, Boise State University, Boise ID, USA
Hans-Peter Marshall
Department of Geosciences, Boise State University, Boise ID, USA
Shad O'Neel
Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, United States Army Corps of Engineers, Hanover NH, USA
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Leung Tsang, Michael Durand, Chris Derksen, Ana P. Barros, Do-Hyuk Kang, Hans Lievens, Hans-Peter Marshall, Jiyue Zhu, Joel Johnson, Joshua King, Juha Lemmetyinen, Melody Sandells, Nick Rutter, Paul Siqueira, Anne Nolin, Batu Osmanoglu, Carrie Vuyovich, Edward Kim, Drew Taylor, Ioanna Merkouriadi, Ludovic Brucker, Mahdi Navari, Marie Dumont, Richard Kelly, Rhae Sung Kim, Tien-Hao Liao, Firoz Borah, and Xiaolan Xu
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Snow water equivalent (SWE) is of fundamental importance to water, energy, and geochemical cycles but is poorly observed globally. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) measurements at X- and Ku-band can address this gap. This review serves to inform the broad snow research, monitoring, and application communities about the progress made in recent decades to move towards a new satellite mission capable of addressing the needs of the geoscience researchers and users.
Juha Lemmetyinen, Juval Cohen, Anna Kontu, Juho Vehviläinen, Henna-Reetta Hannula, Ioanna Merkouriadi, Stefan Scheiblauer, Helmut Rott, Thomas Nagler, Elisabeth Ripper, Kelly Elder, Hans-Peter Marshall, Reinhard Fromm, Marc Adams, Chris Derksen, Joshua King, Adriano Meta, Alex Coccia, Nick Rutter, Melody Sandells, Giovanni Macelloni, Emanuele Santi, Marion Leduc-Leballeur, Richard Essery, Cecile Menard, and Michael Kern
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Hans Lievens, Isis Brangers, Hans-Peter Marshall, Tobias Jonas, Marc Olefs, and Gabriëlle De Lannoy
The Cryosphere, 16, 159–177, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-159-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-159-2022, 2022
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Snow depth observations at high spatial resolution from the Sentinel-1 satellite mission are presented over the European Alps. The novel observations can improve our knowledge of seasonal snow mass in areas with complex topography, where satellite-based estimates are currently lacking, and benefit a number of applications including water resource management, flood forecasting, and numerical weather prediction.
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Short summary
We present an improved method for measuring mountain snow depth using NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite that accounts for steep terrain. By comparison to weather station and helicopter measurements, we show that ICESat-2 captures snow depth both over a season and across a mountain ridge. ICESat-2 works best when slopes are less than 20°. Enough mountain terrain falls within this slope range that ICESat-2 could dramatically expand snow depth observation and provide critical data for water management.
We present an improved method for measuring mountain snow depth using NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite...
