Implementing hemispherical snow water equivalent product assimilating weather station observations and spaceborne microwave data

Snow water equivalent (SWE) is one of the key parameters describing seasonal snow cover. Traditional methods such as interpolating ground-based measurements or estimating SWE from spaceborne measurements have their shortcomings. In this paper an assimilation approach has been used to estimate a time series of SWE in hemispherical scale for 30 years. The behaviour of the algorithm is analyzed and scatterplot of validation results is presented. Results show an improvement over using traditional algorithms.