Detection of snow surface thawing and refreezing in the Eurasian Arctic with QuikSCAT: implications for reindeer herding

Bartsch, Annett; Kumpula, Timo; Forbes, Bruce C.; Stammler, Florian

doi:10.1890/09-1927.1

Cited by 98 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Arctic indigenous peoples have also observed longterm changes in snow conditions as these have direct impacts on their livelihoods (Forbes and Stammler 2009;Bartsch et al 2010). However, their observations are at the local scale, and few are published.…”

Section: Snow Depth Snow Water Equivalent Snow Cover Duration and Ementioning

confidence: 99%

The Changing Face of Arctic Snow Cover: A Synthesis of Observed and Projected Changes

Callaghan

Johansson

Brown

et al. 2011

AMBIO

298

215

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Analysis of in situ and satellite data shows evidence of different regional snow cover responses to the widespread warming and increasing winter precipitation that has characterized the Arctic climate for the past 40-50 years. The largest and most rapid decreases in snow water equivalent (SWE) and snow cover duration (SCD) are observed over maritime regions of the Arctic with the highest precipitation amounts. There is also evidence of marked differences in the response of snow cover between the North American and Eurasian sectors of the Arctic, with the North American sector exhibiting decreases in snow cover and snow depth over the entire period of available in situ observations from around 1950, while widespread decreases in snow cover are not apparent over Eurasia until after around 1980. However, snow depths are increasing in many regions of Eurasia. Warming and more frequent winter thaws are contributing to changes in snow pack structure with important implications for land use and provision of ecosystem services. Projected changes in snow cover from Global Climate Models for the 2050 period indicate increases in maximum SWE of up to 15% over much of the Arctic, with the largest increases (15-30%) over the Siberian sector. In contrast, SCD is projected to decrease by about 10-20% over much of the Arctic, with the smallest decreases over Siberia (\10%) and the largest decreases over Alaska and northern Scandinavia (30-40%) by 2050. These projected changes will have far-reaching consequences for the climate system, human activities, hydrology, and ecology.

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Section: Snow Depth Snow Water Equivalent Snow Cover Duration and Ementioning

confidence: 99%

The Changing Face of Arctic Snow Cover: A Synthesis of Observed and Projected Changes

Callaghan

Johansson

Brown

et al. 2011

AMBIO

298

215

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The formation of ice crusts after rain-on-snow events, or surface thawing with subsequent refreezing, has been observed by satellite monitoring (Bartsch et al 2010). in surface air temperature (T), precipitation (Pr), snow cover duration (D), snow depth (H), snow water equivalent (S) for the Russian part of the Baltic Sea drainage basin and East European Plain.…”

Section: Snow Structure and Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Change—Terrestrial Cryosphere

Rasmus

Boelhouwers

Briede

et al. 2015

Regional Climate Studies

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This chapter compiles and assesses information on recent and current change within the terrestrial cryosphere of the Baltic Sea drainage basin. Findings are based on long-term observations. Snow cover extent (SCE), duration and amount have shown a widespread decrease although there is large interannual and regional variation. Few data are available on changes in snow structural properties. There is no evidence for a recent change in the frequency or severity of snow-related extreme events. There has been a decrease in glacier coverage in Sweden and glacier ice thickness in inland Scandinavia. The European permafrost is warming, and there has been a northward retreat of the southern boundary of near-surface permafrost in European Russia.Keywords seasonal snow cover Á glaciers Á seasonally frozen ground Á permafrost 6

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“…The previously documented threshold of −2 dB for VH polarized imagery showed a strong underestimation of SCE when compared to the Landsat SCE [39]. We therefore suggest that the extraction of frozen ice layers is also required to accurately estimate snow cover [80]. A threshold of 1 dB, which includes both wet snow (negative ratio) and ice layers (positive ratio), seems to be a more appropriate threshold in Arctic ecosystems.…”

Section: Spatiotemporal Monitoring Of Snowmelt Dynamics Using Tsxmentioning

confidence: 61%

“…Previous research has shown that the formation of ice crusts is highly visible in Ku-Band data [44][45][46]. A metamorphism of snow crystals due to compaction, sintering and temperature change, in turn influences the dielectric properties of the snowpack.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada

et al. 2018

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Abstract:The timing of snowmelt is an important turning point in the seasonal cycle of small Arctic catchments. The TerraSAR-X (TSX) satellite mission is a synthetic aperture radar system (SAR) with high potential to measure the high spatiotemporal variability of snow cover extent (SCE) and fractional snow cover (FSC) on the small catchment scale. We investigate the performance of multi-polarized and multi-pass TSX X-Band SAR data in monitoring SCE and FSC in small Arctic tundra catchments of Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island) off the Yukon Coast in the Western Canadian Arctic. We applied a threshold based segmentation on ratio images between TSX images with wet snow and a dry snow reference, and tested the performance of two different thresholds. We quantitatively compared TSX-and Landsat 8-derived SCE maps using confusion matrices and analyzed the spatiotemporal dynamics of snowmelt from 2015 to 2017 using TSX, Landsat 8 and in situ time lapse data. Our data showed that the quality of SCE maps from TSX X-Band data is strongly influenced by polarization and to a lesser degree by incidence angle. VH polarized TSX data performed best in deriving SCE when compared to Landsat 8. TSX derived SCE maps from VH polarization detected late lying snow patches that were not detected by Landsat 8. Results of a local assessment of TSX FSC against the in situ data showed that TSX FSC accurately captured the temporal dynamics of different snow melt regimes that were related to topographic characteristics of the studied catchments. Both in situ and TSX FSC showed a longer snowmelt period in a catchment with higher contributions of steep valleys and a shorter snowmelt period in a catchment with higher contributions of upland terrain. Landsat 8 had fundamental data gaps during the snowmelt period in all 3 years due to cloud cover. The results also revealed that by choosing a positive threshold of 1 dB, detection of ice layers due to diurnal temperature variations resulted in a more accurate estimation of snow cover than a negative threshold that detects wet snow alone. We find that TSX X-Band data in VH polarization performs at a comparable quality to Landsat 8 in deriving SCE maps when a positive threshold is used. We conclude that TSX data polarization can be used to accurately monitor snowmelt events at high temporal and spatial resolution, overcoming limitations of Landsat 8, which due to cloud related data gaps generally only indicated the onset and end of snowmelt.

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Detection of snow surface thawing and refreezing in the Eurasian Arctic with QuikSCAT: implications for reindeer herding

Cited by 98 publications

References 34 publications

The Changing Face of Arctic Snow Cover: A Synthesis of Observed and Projected Changes

The Changing Face of Arctic Snow Cover: A Synthesis of Observed and Projected Changes

Recent Change—Terrestrial Cryosphere

TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada

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