ASTRA-Snow will develop methodologies for the remote sensing of snow mass, or the Snow Water Equivalent (SWE). This is a parameter which is currently poorly observed; we lack baseline knowledge on where, when and how snow mass is changing. Remote sensing offers the only viable tool for measuring snow mass in remote areas in the Arctic, subarctic and high mountain regions. Despite decades of effort, remote sensing methods of snow mass still lack to provide the information needed by operational weather forecasts, climate studies, and hydrology. ASTRA-Snow will address these issues, both by developing new methods to interpret past satellite data archives (for climatology), and to develop methods for new sensor types able to detect snow mass at unprecedented accuracy and spatial resolution (for NWP and hydrology).

2019

2024