A novel technique for autonomous snow quantity measurement

The purpose of NASA´s Snow and Cold Land Processes (SCLP) mission is to quantify the snow cover around the world from space using radiometer and radar technology [1]. Both techniques are based on scattering: snow cover scatters radiation of different frequencies in different ways, depending on quantities such as how wet the snow is, the snow grain size and shape, its depth, etc. However, it is not robustly understood how these quantities affect snow´s scattering properties [2]. A major impediment is that it is difficult to measure snow ground truth. We present a novel technique for autonomous collection of snow ground truth data with both high temporal and spatial resolution over areas as large as 1km². The goal of this project is to provide convenient ground-truth data that can be used for SCLP calibration and validation.