Historical gridded snow water equivalent over the Northern Hemisphere from remote sensing and land surface models

Datasets of daily and monthly snow water equivalent (SWE) over the Northern Hemisphere (excluding Greenland) were constructed using a multi-dataset approach for the time period 1981-2020. The data are on a regular 0.5-degree grid, with a threshold maximum of 2000mm. The general methodology for the creation of these datasets follows that of Mudryk et al. (2015). Supplemental Information Monthly snow cover fraction (SCF) and monthly snow water equivalent (SWE) are calculated using daily SWE data taken from the following four sources over the 35-year period from 1981 to 2016. Four sources of daily SWE data: The Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications Version 2 (MERRA-2) (Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, 2016 [Ref 1]; Gelaro et al., 2017 [Ref 2] is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) atmospheric reanalysis product generated with the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5.2.0 (GEOS-5), atmospheric general circulation model and atmospheric data assimilation system (ADAS). The temperature index model described by Brown et al. (2003) [Ref 3] reconstructs daily SWE using 6-hourly temperature field and 12-hourly precipitation…

Publisher

Environment and Climate Change Canada

Resources

2

Catalogue metadata updated

2025-10-21