SnowEx is a field and airborne campaign sponsored by the Terrestrial Hydrology
Program to test different remote sensing instruments in different snow conditions.
For NASA's SnowEx, we're going to Alaska this year.
We've done some work in the western U.S.
looking at mountain snowpack.
This is an opportunity to test different instruments
in the boreal forest and tundra environments.
The sites that we've selected are really representative
of these larger biomes that are throughout the northern latitudes.
And Alaska really offers a great testbed area to do that.
There are, you know,
some of the world's greatest researchers already working up there studying snow.
So to be able to go up there, partner with them, use research sites
that have long heritage of snow research is a real opportunity for SnowEx.
We'll have people on the ground, about 40 people on the ground visiting
each of these five sites every day, collecting measurements on snowpack
profiles, snow depth, SWE, or snow water equivalent.
At the same time, we'll have in March, we'll have two aircraft flying.
One will be flying SWESARR, which is an active-passive
microwave instrument that was developed at Goddard.
And the other plane will be flying a lidar and a stereo imager.
And in April, we have
another campaign to look at snow albedo.
This is the final year of the SnowEx campaign.
It’s a little bittersweet because, you know, it's just been great
working with the community, collecting all this data.
Open science has been a huge aspect of SnowEx
and hack weeks that we've had, and that will continue to live on.
But I think this is just the starting point.
You know,
hopefully this will be a stepping stone that will lead us to a satellite mission.
Currently, there isn't a spaceborne mission that's dedicated to global
snowmass.
The goal of SnowEx has been to prepare the community for
a spaceborne opportunity.