An overview of the current NASA operational AMSR-E/AMSR2 snow science team activities

The knowledge of snow depth (SD) and snow water equivalent (SWE) is fundamental for water resources management and weather and flashflood forecast, among other things. Snow also strongly influences the global energy balance because of its high reflectivity, insulation properties, and the amount of latent heat consumed during melting. Data collected at global scale by space-borne passive microwave sensors have been used to estimate SWE and SD at operational level. In particular, data collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) and by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) are routinely used to generate global maps of SWE and SD. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of selected activities of the NASA operational AMSR-E/AMSR2 snow science team. In particular, we provide specific details on the results dealing with AMSr-E/AMSR2 cross-calibration, the validation of a research prototype algorithm for re-processing historical AMSR-E data and the assessment of an approach for producing enhanced spatial resolution maps (7.5 km) at global scale for the AMSR-E period.