Snow wetness monitoring using multi-temporal polarimetric ASAR data and multi-layer hybrid model

This paper presents a method to characterize snow cover using multi-temporal dual polarization ASAR/ENVISAT data. At first, variations of electromagnetic backscattering of snowpack depending on melting are explained and validated by a multi-layer model. It is demonstrated that it is crucial to exactly model the distribution of Liquid Water Content inside snow pack in C-band. Consequently, a new mapping algorithm based on the French weather model CROCUS is proposed in order to estimate the spatial variability of layered snowpack profile.