BGS Hosted Metadata
European Space Agency (ESA) GlobSnow Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) v2.0 products
The GlobSnow SWE product is the first satellite based daily SWE dataset for the non-alpine northern hemisphere that extends from 1979 to 2014. The previous existing daily SWE records have spanned a shorter time period (2002-2014) or described the snow conditions on a monthly basis for a similar period (1978-2014).
The GlobSnow SWE record utilizes a novel data-assimilation based approach for SWE estimation which combines weather station measurements of snow depth with satellite passive microwave measurements. This approach was shown to be superior to alternative algorithms which solely utilize satellite data through comparison with extensive ground reference datasets.
The GlobSnow-1 and -2 projects have developed a long term data record of SWE products covering the non-alpine Northern Hemisphere, based on a time series of remotely sensed observations from the Nimbus-7 SMMR, DMSP F8/F11/F13/F17 SSM/I(S) instruments and ground-based weather station measurements from 1979 until 2014.
There are three SWE products (all on the EASE model grid; see Armstrong and Brodzik, 1995):
- Daily Snow Water Equivalent (Daily L3A SWE), snow water equivalent (mm) for each grid cell for all evaluated land areas of the Northern Hemisphere.
- Weekly Aggregated Snow Water Equivalent (Weekly L3B SWE), calculated for each day based on a 7-day sliding time window aggregation of the daily SWE product.
- Monthly Aggregated Snow Water Equivalent (Monthly L3B SWE), a single product for each calendar month, providing the average and maximum SWE, calculated from the weekly aggregated SWE product.
The GlobSnow-1 project resulted in two versions of the data record, SWE v1.0 and SWE v1.3 (available from FMI). The dataset produced in GlobSnow-2 is identified as the GlobSnow SWE v2.0 data record.
In addition to the SWE retrievals, the SWE products include information on the overall extent of snow cover. The information on snow extent is included in the product by utilizing the following coding for the SWE product, whereby SWE values of:
- 0 mm denotes snow-free areas (Snow Extent 0%)
- 0.001 mm denote areas with melting snow (Snow Extent undefined between 0% and 100%; no SWE retrieval because of the wet state of the snow cover)
- > 0.001 mm denote areas with full snow cover (Snow Extent 100%)
The areas that have been flagged as snow-free or melted are identified using a time-series melt detection approach described in Takala et al. (2009). The areas that are identified as wet snow or have no SWE retrieval, but are identified as snow covered with the time-series melt-detection approach, are denoted with a SWE value of 0.001 mm. The areas that are determined as snow-free or melted by the melt-detection approach, are denoted with a SWE value of 0 mm. All the other areas show a retrieved SWE value (that is in all cases greater than 0.001 mm).
The project was coordinated by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). Other project partners involved are NR (Norwegian Computing Centre), ENVEO IT GmbH, GAMMA Remote Sensing AG, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Environment Canada (EC), Northern Research Institute (Norut), University of Bern, Meteoswiss and ZAMG.
Simple
- Date (Publication)
- 2015-09-22T20:44:17
- Date (Creation)
- 2015-09-22T20:44:17
- Citation identifier
- https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/2f068226c7164a799cf202d1e7af07b2
- Citation identifier
- Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) / 2f068226c7164a799cf202d1e7af07b2
- Point of contact
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role Unavailable
Luojus, Kari
Unavailable
Author Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)
Custodian Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)
Distributor Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)
pointofContact Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI)
unknown
Publisher
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Unknown
- Update scope
- Series
- Keywords
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esa
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globsnow
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snow
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climate
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swe
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GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
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atmospheric conditions
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- Access constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- Please contact the data centre for assistance on accessing data from this dataset collection.
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Spatial representation type
- Grid
- Language
- English
- Topic category
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- Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
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- Begin date
- 1979-09-10T23:00:00
- End date
- 2013-05-30T23:00:00
- Unique resource identifier
- WGS 84
- Distribution format
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Name Version Contact data centre for format details.
- Distributor contact
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)
Distributor
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/2f068226c7164a799cf202d1e7af07b2 CEDA Data Catalogue Page
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name http://www.globsnow.info/ GlobSnow Homepage
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name http://data.ceda.ac.uk/neodc/esa_globsnow/doc/GlobSnow-FInalReport.pdf GlobSnow2 Final Report
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/027311779500397W Armstrong, R.L. , M.J. Brodzik, An earth-gridded SSM/I data set for cryospheric studies and global change monitoring, Advances in Space Research, Volume 16, Issue 10, 1995, Pages 155-163, ISSN 0273-1177, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0273-1177(95)00397-W
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4914809&tag=1 Snowmelt detection: M. Takala, J. Pulliainen, S. J. Metsamaki and J. T. Koskinen, "Detection of Snowmelt Using Spaceborne Microwave Radiometer Data in Eurasia From 1979 to 2007," in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 47, no. 9, pp. 2996-3007, Sept. 2009. doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2009.2018442
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425711003166 Implementation: Matias Takala, Kari Luojus, Jouni Pulliainen, Chris Derksen, Juha Lemmetyinen, Juha-Petri Kärnä, Jarkko Koskinen, Bojan Bojkov, Estimating northern hemisphere snow water equivalent for climate research through assimilation of space-borne radiometer data and ground-based measurements, Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 115, Issue 12, 15 December 2011, Pages 3517-3529, ISSN 0034-4257, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2011.08.014.
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425706000241 Basic Methodology: Jouni Pulliainen, Mapping of snow water equivalent and snow depth in boreal and sub-arctic zones by assimilating space-borne microwave radiometer data and ground-based observations, Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 101, Issue 2, 30 March 2006, Pages 257-269, ISSN 0034-4257, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2006.01.002.
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name https://zenodo.org/record/7356945/files/GS2_SWE_ATBD.pdf SWE Algorithm Theoretical Basis document
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Conformance result
- Title
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Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Statement
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Please see data lineage statements for each dataset within this collection for data lineage details.
Metadata
- File identifier
- 2f068226c7164a799cf202d1e7af07b2 XML
- Metadata language
- English
- Character set
- UTF8
- Hierarchy level
- Series
- Hierarchy level name
-
series
- Date stamp
- 2025-12-04T03:27:07
- Metadata standard name
- UK GEMINI
- Metadata standard version
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2.3
- Metadata author
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)
Point of contact
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