SnowEx Field Campaigns

Music: "World Citizens," "Geothermical Power," Universal Production MusicThis video can be freely shared and downloaded. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, some individual imagery provided by pond5.com, Boise State University, Matt Crook and Harrison Bach and is obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html.Complete transcript available.Video Descriptive Text available. ||

Music: "Timelapse," "A New Dawn," Universal Production MusicComplete transcript available.Footage provided by Harrison Bach. For licensing information, contact hbach21@gmail.com || NASA’s SnowEx ground and airborne campaign is a multiyear effort using a variety of techniques to study snow characteristics, and the team began their new field study year in January 2021. Not only is SnowEx learning valuable information about how snow properties change by terrain and season, but they are also testing the tools NASA will need to sample snow from space. ||

Music: "Beautiful Serenity," "Frozen Waves," Universal Production Music.This video can be freely shared and downloaded. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, some individual imagery provided by pond5.com and Boise State University and is obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on stock footage may be found here. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html.Complete transcript available.Notes on footage:0:31 - 3:28 provided by Matt Crook/Boise State University3:28 - 3:36 provided by pond5.com ||

Music: "Storm Chasers," "Black Coffee," "From Small Beginnings," Universal Production MusicComplete transcript available. || NASA’s SnowEx ground and airborne campaign is a multiyear effort using a variety of techniques to study snow characteristics, and the team concluded their second year in March 2020. Not only is SnowEx learning valuable information about how snow properties change by terrain and season, but they are also testing the tools NASA will need to sample snow from space. || Carrie Vuyovich provides a wrap up of the final day of field work. ||

This February, a NASA-led research campaign called SnowEx kicked off in Colorado. The 5-year study will advance global measurements of how much snow is on the ground at any given time and how much liquid water is contained in that snow. The amount of water in snow plays a huge role in water availability for drinking water, agriculture, and hydropower.Teams of 50 researchers are stationed at Grand Mesa and Senator Beck Basin over a three-week period to measure snow using a variety of snow-sensing instruments and techniques. Ground measurements will allow the team to validate the remotely sensed measurements acquired by multiple sensors on the various aircraft.Data acquired from the SnowEx campaign will be stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and will be available to anyone to order at no cost, as is the case with all NASA data. For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/ ||

SnowEx is a NASA led multi-year research campaign to improve measurements of how much snow is on the ground at any given time and how much liquid water is contained in that snow.Five aircraft with a total of ten different sensors will participate in the SnowEx campaign. From a base of operations at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, SnowEx will deploy a P-3 Orion aircraft operated by the Scientific Development Squadron ONE (VXS-1), based at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. A King Air plane will fly out of Grand Junction, Colorado, while high-altitude NASA jets will fly from Johnson Space Center in Houston.The planes will carry passive and active microwave sensors that are good at measuring snow-water equivalent in dry snow, but are less optimal for measuring snow forests or light snow cover. The campaign will also deploy an airborne laser instrument to measure snow depth, and airborne sensors to measure surface temperature and reflected light from snow.Data acquired from the SnowEx campaign will be stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and will be available to anyone to order at no cost, as is the case with all NASA data.For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions ||

SnowEx is a NASA led multi-year research campaign to improve measurements of how much snow is on the ground at any given time and how much liquid water is contained in that snow.Five aircraft with a total of ten different sensors will participate in the SnowEx campaign. From a base of operations at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, SnowEx will deploy a P-3 Orion aircraft operated by the Scientific Development Squadron ONE (VXS-1), based at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. A King Air plane will fly out of Grand Junction, Colorado, while high-altitude NASA jets will fly from Johnson Space Center in Houston. The planes will carry passive and active microwave sensors that are good at measuring snow-water equivalent in dry snow, but are less optimal for measuring snow forests or light snow cover. The campaign will also deploy an airborne laser instrument to measure snow depth, and airborne sensors to measure surface temperature and reflected light from snow.Data acquired from the SnowEx campaign will be stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and will be available to anyone to order at no cost, as is the case with all NASA data.For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions ||

SnowEx is a NASA led multi-year research campaign to improve measurements of how much snow is on the ground at any given time and how much liquid water is contained in that snow.Starting in February, teams of 50 researchers are stationed at Grand Mesa and Senator Beck Basin over a three-week period to measure snow using a variety of snow-sensing instruments and techniques.Ground measurements will allow the team to validate the remotely-sensed measurements acquired by the multiple sensors on the various aircraft.Data acquired from the SnowEx campaign will be stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and will be available to anyone to order at no cost, as is the case with all NASA data. For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/ ||

Visualization showing the changes in snow cover and sea ice with the seasons, for the years 2019-2021. || Global snow cover and sea ice waxes and wanes with the seasons, as the axial tilt of the Earth with respect to the Sun oscillates throughout the year. As can be seen in this visualization, the cycles of ice and snow are about six months out of phase between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, since the north is tilted towards the Sun when the nouth is tilted away, and vice versa. || Snow cover and sea ice, north only ||

Seasonal snow cover and sea ice across the globe from September 2010 to August 2011 || This set of frames provides the background layer only of the seasonal snow cover and sea ice across the globe from September 2010 to August 2011. || This set of frames provides the dates layer only of the seasonal snow cover and sea ice across the globe from September 2010 to August 2011. || North America sea ice and snow cover from September 2010 to August 2011 || This set of frames provides the background layer only of the North America sea ice and snow cover from September 2010 to August 2011 ||

Blue Marble: Next Generation is a years worth of monthly composites at a spatial resolution of 500 meters. These monthly images, from january through December, reveal seasonal changes to the land surface: the green-up and dying-back of vegetation in temperate regions such as North America and Europe, dry and wet seasons in the tropics, and advancing and retreating Northern Hemisphere snow cover. || Blue Marble: Next Generation is a years worth of monthly composites at a spatial resolution of 500 meters. These monthly images, from January through December, reveal seasonal changes to the land surface: the green-up and dying-back of vegetation in temperate regions such as North America and Europe, dry and wet seasons in the tropics, and advancing and retreating Northern Hemisphere snow cover. The data are from 2004, from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite.For more information, visit the Blue Marble on the Earth Observatory. ||

snow cover in the Great Lakes region with Night Lights || An Arctic air mass brought snow to communities around the Great Lakes on December 14, 2016. The lake-effect snow came on the heels of an earlier accumulation that dumped several feet of snow in some areas the week before. The VIIRS DNB on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this image on December 14. The instrument can detect faint light sources—in this case, the reflection of the full Moon on the fresh snow. Clouds blur the landscape in the bottom left part of the image. Parallel rows of clouds, called cloud streets, appear above Lake Huron and Lake Superior. These clouds are created by cold, dry air blowing over a lake and accumulating water vapor. ||

This visualization focuses on the Tuolumne Basin, located within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park, which supplies water via the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct to the San Francisco Bay Area. Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) data collected by the Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) between 2014 and 2017 is depicted in blues and whites, showing how the snowpack changes over time. This version includes a colorbar. || The Airborne Snow Observatory is an Earth-based mission designed to collect data on the snow melt flowing out of major water basins in the western United States. The data could help improve water management for 1.5 billion people worldwide who rely on snow melt for their water supply.The Airborne Snow Observatory is a collaboration between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Department of Water Resources. ||

Figure 1b: This image shows how the reduced albedo of the snow from dust, black carbon and organic carbon (the "snow darkening effect") alters difference in snow water equivalent through increased springtime melt. A colorbar reflects the quantities of the difference. || A recent study by Yasunari et al. (2015) discussed the impact of the light-absorbing aerosol (LAA) depositions on snowpack such as dust, black carbon, and organic carbon on boreal spring climate. They used the 10-year period of 2002-2011 and 10-ensemble NASA GEOS-5 global simulations implemented with the GOddard SnoW Impurity Module (GOSWIM) in order to evaluate the LAA impacts on seasonal snowpack over land in spring.* The LAA impacts on snow is known as the "snow darkening effect" (SDE). Yasunari et al. computed the differences in the 100-year-data mean, called the ensemble mean climatology, with and without SDE cases to determine the impact of SDE on boreal spring climate. Figure 1b shows the SDE impact on snow water equivalent (i.e. snow amount converted to water amount) changes in spring. They also pointed out that the existence of SDE can induce the land surface heating over 15 W m-2 near the snowline by the mean increases of the net shortwave flux (Figure 1c). The heated areas can increase the surface skin temperature by about 3-6 K (see Figure 1d in the original paper).* March-May ||

This February, a NASA-led research campaign called SnowEx kicked off in Colorado. The 5-year study will advance global measurements of how much snow is on the ground at any given time and how much liquid water is contained in that snow. The amount of water in snow plays a huge role in water availability for drinking water, agriculture, and hydropower.Teams of 50 researchers are stationed at Grand Mesa and Senator Beck Basin over a three-week period to measure snow using a variety of snow-sensing instruments and techniques. Ground measurements will allow the team to validate the remotely sensed measurements acquired by multiple sensors on the various aircraft.Data acquired from the SnowEx campaign will be stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and will be available to anyone to order at no cost, as is the case with all NASA data. For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/ ||

A group of scientists and pilots conducted a series of science flights over Western Colorado for a new five-year NASA-led airborne mission called SnowEx.SnowEx is exploring better ways to measuring how much water is stored in snow-covered regions with the goal of eventually creating a future snow satellite mission. More accurate snow measurements will help scientists and decisions-makers better understand our world’s water supply and better predict floods and droughts. Data acquired from the SnowEx campaign will be stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and will be available to anyone to order at no cost, as is the case with all NASA data.For more information:NASA's SnowEx Challenges the Sensing Techniques...'Until They Break'NASA: Snow Science in Support of Our Nation's Water Supply ||

The Global Precipitation Measurement can help improve numerical weather predictions of snowfall by measuring the size and shape distribution of snow particles, layer by layer, in a storm. || Music: "Piano Cells," Anthony Phillips, Killer Tracks.Snowflake Images courtesy of Alexey Kljatov.Complete transcript available. || Animation of molecular bonding of a typical snowflake. || Animation showing a snowflake growing. || Illustrative representation of how the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission can detect the size and shape distribution of snowflake particles within layers of a cloud. ||

B-roll for NASA interviews on Friday, February 17, 2017. || NASA Views Snow from Space: What a Difference a Year MakesSnow doesn’t fall everywhere, but how much falls and where has global consequencesThe snapshot of snow from space tells a different story every year. Last January, a winter storm pummeled the east coast and broke several snowfall records. This winter the Sierra Nevada was hit by consecutive storms, each one piling more snow on top of the last storm's snow. NASA’s view from space highlights these dramatic differences, but the story is incomplete.More than a sixth of the world’s population relies on melt water from seasonal snowpack and glaciers, but it is challenging to measure the volume and depth of snow cover, especially in remote locations and dense forests. Determining exactly how much snow is on the ground globally and understanding the contribution of winter storms to the world’s water resources are key pieces to the Earth system puzzle.NASA is in the field right now, testing techniques and technologies for measuring snow’s water content. Join NASA scientists on Friday, February 17, from 6:00 a.m – 11:30 a.m. EST to show your viewers NASA’s snow imagery and discuss strides towards improved space-based measurement of snow on Earth.The effects of snow are global. For example, California’s Central Valley, which relies on seasonal snow melt, constitutes only 2 percent of US cropland, yet it produces nearly half the nation’s fruits and nuts. The benefits of snow measurements are huge because of the importance of snow to agriculture, water security, natural hazards and more.Thanks to a half-century of snow observations, we know these amazing facts, which are crucial to understanding what’s necessary to advance snow measurements.• More than one-sixth of the world’s population (1.2 billion people) relies on melt water from snowpack and glaciers. • Up to 70 percent of water resources in the western United States are from snow melt. In California, more than 70 percent of water from the San Joaquin River, which originates from Sierra Nevada snow, is used to irrigate the Central Valley.• 60 million people in the U.S. rely on snowmelt as their primary source of freshwater.• Globally, 30 percent of land area gets covered by snow and about half of the snow cover area has tree cover of some sort.• Since 1967, a million square miles of spring snow cover has disappeared from the Northern Hemisphere, an area the size of the entire southwestern United States.• NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM) tracks falling snow, including off the coast where few observations exist, in the mountains where ground-based radar may have challenges, and even at the tops of hurricanes.• Snowflakes (crystals) have six sides, but most of the snowflakes we see are multiple crystals stuck together. Snow crystals stick together and begin to change or metamorphose as soon as they fall to the ground.• The same sensing technology used to measure seasonal snowpack on Earth can be used to measure ice on Mars.*** To Book a Window ***Contact Clare Skelly – clare.a.skelly@nasa.gov / 301-286-4994 (office)HD Satellite Coordinates for G17-K18Upper: Galaxy 17 Ku-band Xp 18 Slot Upper| 91.0 ° W Longitude | DL 12069.0 MHz | Vertical Polarity | QPSK/DVB-S | FEC 3/4 | SR 13.235 Mbps | DR 18.2954 MHz | HD 720p | Format MPEG2 | Chroma Level 4:2:0 | Audio EmbeddedSuggested Questions:1. NASA satellites see snow cover from space. How does this winter compare to previous years?2. NASA scientists are in the field right now testing advanced technologies for measuring snow. How will these new measurements be used? 3. Can NASA actually see falling snow from space?4. Up to 70 percent of water resources in the western United States come from snow melt. California has been getting heavy rain and snow recently, does that mean the drought is over?5. How does snow impact parts of the country that rarely see any snowfall?6. Where can we learn more?Scientists:Dorothy Hall / NASA Scientist—or—Matthew Rodell / NASA Scientist—or—Dalia Kirschbaum / NASA Scientist ||

The Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, or ABoVE, is a NASA-led, 10-year field experiment designed to better understand the ecological and social consequences of environmental change in one of the most rapidly changing regions on Earth. Satellite, airborne, and ground observations across Alaska and Canada will help us better understand the local and regional effects of changing forests, permafrost, and ecosystems – and how these changes could ultimately affect people and places beyond the Arctic.

From November 10 through December 21, NASA and university scientists are taking to the field to study wet winter weather near Seattle, Washington. With weather radars, weather balloons, specialized ground instruments, and NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory, the science team will be verifying rain and snowfall observations made by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite mission on a NASA-led field campaign, The Olympic Mountain Experiment, or OLYMPEX.For more information: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-heads-to-pacific-northwest-for-field-campaign-to-measure-rain-and-snowfall ||

For six weeks in Ontario, Canada, scientists and engineers lead a field campaign to study the science and mechanics of falling snow. The datasets retrieved will be used to generate algorithms which translate what the GPM Core satellite "sees" into precipitation rates, including that of falling snow. Ground validation science manager Walt Petersen gives a summary of the GCPEx field campaign. Field campaigns are critical in improving satellite observations and precipitation measurements. || Ground validation science manager Walt Petersen gives a summary of the GCPEx field campaign.For complete transcript, click here. ||

NASA is flying an airborne science laboratory through Canadian snowstorms for six weeks in support of a difficult task of the upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission: measuring snowfall from space. GPM is an international satellite mission scheduled for launch in 2014 that will provide next-generation observations of worldwide rain and snow every three hours. It is the first precipitation mission designed to detect falling snow from space. NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory flew this flight path on Jan 19, 2012 in support of NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement Cold-season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx) snow study. The GCPEx field campaign will help scientists match measurements of snow in the air and on the ground. ||

NASA is flying an airborne science laboratory through Canadian snowstorms for six weeks in support of a difficult task of the upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission: measuring snowfall from space. GPM is an international satellite mission scheduled for launch in 2014 that will provide next-generation observations of worldwide rain and snow every three hours. It is the first precipitation mission designed to detect falling snow from space. || Video file for GCPEx field campaign.For complete transcript, click here. ||