The Tienshan Urumqi Glacier No.1 (TUG1) usually shows "grey" surfaces in summers. Besides known regional warming, what should be responsible for largely reducing its surface albedo and making it look "grey"? A field campaign was conducted on the TUG1 on a selected cloud-free day of 2013 after a snow fall at night. Fresh and aged snow samples were collected in the field, and snow densities, grai...

[1] Measurements of snow using a high-resolution micropenetrometer can be used to discriminate between different snow types; in lower-density snow the signal is sensitive to microstructure, and micromechanical properties can be estimated. Although a physics-based snow penetration theory was first developed almost a decade ago, since that time the majority of studies using snow micropenetrometer...

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) daily snow cover products provide an opportunity for determining snow onset and melt dates across broad geographic regions; however, cloud cover and polar darkness are limiting factors at higher latitudes. This study presents snow onset and melt dates for Alaska, portions of western Canada and the Russian Far East derived from Terra MODIS sn...

Taking northern Xinjiang, China, as an example, this study first compares the standard MODIS Terra and Aqua snow cover classifications, and then compares the accuracy of the standard MODIS daily and 8-day snow cover products with the new daily and multi-day snow cover combination of MODIS Terra and Aqua observations using in situ measurements. Under clear sky in both products, the agreement of ...

The directional emissivity of snow and ice surfaces in the 8–14 Am thermal infrared (TIR) atmospheric window was determined from spectral radiances obtained by field measurements using a portable Fourier transform infrared spectrometer in conjunction with snow pit work. The dependence of the directional emissivity on the surface snow type (grain size and shape) was examined. We obtained emissiv...

The MODIS daily snow albedo product is a data layer in the MOD10A1 snow-cover product that includes snow-covered area and fractional snow cover as well as quality information and other metadata (Riggs et al., 2006; Hall and Riggs, 2007). It was developed to augment the MODIS BRDF/Albedo algorithm (MCD43) that provides 16-day maps of albedo globally at 500-m resolution (Schaaf et al., 2002). But...

Accurate measurements of snowpack are needed both by scientists to model climate and by water supply managers to predict/mitigate drought and flood conditions. Existing in situ snow sensors/networks lack the necessary spatial and temporal sensitivity. Satellite measurements currently assess snow cover rather than snow depth. Existing GPS networks are a potential source of new snow data for clim...

This article presents snow hydrology updates made to iTree-Hydro, previously called the Urban Forest Effects—Hydrology model. iTree-Hydro Version 1 was a warm climate model developed by the USDA Forest Service to provide a process-based planning tool with robust water quantity and quality predictions given data limitations common to most urban areas. Cold climate hydrology routines presented in...

[1] Snow cover strongly interacts with climate through snow albedo feedbacks. However, global climate models still are not adequate in representing snow cover fraction (SCF), i.e., the fraction of a model grid cell covered by snow. Through an analysis of the advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) derived SCF and the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) gridded snow depth and snow wate...