(1) Snow melt period of December to April in combination with precipitation (typical of lowland and hilly parts of the Labe, Vltava and Morava catchments). (2) Longer duration of rainfall lasting 10 to 72 hours (rainfall intensified and prolonged by elevation enhancement). (3) Intensive short duration of summer rainfall exceeding (flood peak occurring within hours of rainfall peak, small areas ...

The DLR-funded project “Integration of remote sensing data in operational water balance and flood forecasting systems” (InFerno) has been originated to establish an operational synergy of remote sensing and flood forecasting. Upon availability, InFerno intends to make excessive use of ENVISAT ASAR data, which will provide microwave imagery at a specifically appropriate spatial and temporal reso...

Snow is an important component of the water cycle, and its estimation in hydrological models is of great significance concerning the simulation and forecasting of flood events due to snow-melt. The assimilation of Snow Cover Area (SCA) in physical distributed hydrological models is a possible source of improvement of snowmelt-related floods. In this study, the assimilation in the LISFLOOD model...

The enhanced radar return associated with melting snow, ‘the bright band’, can lead to large overestimates of rain rates. Most correction schemes rely on fitting the radar observations to a vertical profile of reflectivity (VPR) which includes the bright band enhancement. Observations show that the VPR is very variable in space and time; large enhancements occur for melting snow, but none for t...

Information on snow cover and snow properties is an important factor for hydrology and runoff modeling. Frequent updates of snow cover information can help to improve water balance and discharge calculations. Within the frame of Polar View, snow products from multisensoral satellite data are operationally provided to control and update water balance models for large parts of Southern Germany. T...

[1] Pits in rocks on the surface of Mars have been observed at several locations. Similar pits are observed in rocks in the Mars‐like hyperarid, hypothermal stable upland zone of the Antarctic Dry Valleys; these form by very localized chemical weathering due to transient melting of small amounts of snow on dark dolerite boulders preferentially heated above the melting point of water by sunlight...

i Abstract A radar simulator for polarimetric radar variables including reflectivities at horizontal and vertical polarizations, the differential reflectivity and the specific differential phase, has been developed. This simulator serves as a testbed for developing and testing forward observation operators of polarimetric radar variables that are needed when directly assimilating these variable...

This paper presents a study to demonstrate the potential of a spaceborne u-band scatterometer to monitor global snow cover. Global u-band data were acquired by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Scatterometer (NSCAT) operated on the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) from September 1996 to June 1997. NSCAT backscatter patterns over the northern hemisphere reveals b...