View the 2023 Experimental Plan for more information.

Overview:

In 2023, the NASA SnowEx campaign focuses on the tundra and boreal forest regions of Alaska to collect observations of snow in these unique environments. This effort takes place over the year and half period  starting in the spring of 2022 through fall of 2023, and includes no-/low-snow data acquisitions in October 2022 and 2023, and a snow-on campaign in March 2023 with airborne radar, radiometer, LiDAR and stereophotogrammetry observations. An albedo campaign to collect hyperspectral data during the snow melt period was conducted in April-May 2023. Shown below is the timeline of events for the measurement periods: 

Figure: SWESARR science lines (yellow boxes) and associated flight lines (red line) over each site for the SWE/Snow Depth retrievals.

The Measurement Strategy: 

Ground-based measurements will be point-based observations and serve as a robust validation data set to compare with the scheduled airborne and overlapping satellite observations. Manual sampling on the ground will include observations of both ground and snow conditions. 

Ground Measurements

Ground conditions: 

• Soil moisture
• Freeze-thaw state
• TLS - to characterize under/within canopy snow and no-snow conditions

Snow conditions:

• Snow pits - selected with input from models, 2022 lidar data
• Snow depth transects or spirals (magnaprobe, GPR)
• mini-pits/SMP - variability in stratigraphy
• SWE tubes - snow density variability
• Microstructure (SSA, SMP, Casting)

Airborne Measurements

• Active/passive microwave (SWESARR) during no/low-snow and snow-on conditions
• Lidar & stereo imagery during no/low-snow and snow-on conditions
• Hyperspectral (AVIRIS-NG) during melt period at boreal forest sites

Coincident satellite observations

• ICESat-2 (lidar)
• Worldview (optical)
• Pleaides-HR (optical)
• BlackSky (optical)
• Planet SkySat-C (optical)
• Capella (X-band)
• ICEYE (X-band)
• Sentinel 1A (C-band)

Learn more by reading the 2023 Experimental Plan (updated June 2024)