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Abstracts
SEARCH Open Science Meeting
October 27, 2003
Seattle, Washington, USA
The Cold Land Processes Pathfinder: A Spaceborne Mission Concept for Cyrosphere Studies
Kyle C. McDonald1, Simon Yueh2, Donald Cline3, Robert E. Davis4
1Terrestrial Science Research Element, Jet Propulsion Lab, Mail Stop 300-233, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA, 91109, USA, Phone 818-354-3263, Fax 818-354-9476, kyle.mcdonald@jpl.nasa.gov
2Radar Science and Engineering, Jet Propulsion Lab, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA, 91109, USA, Phone 818-354-3012, Fax 818-393-5285, simon.yueh@jpl.nasa.gov
3National Operational Remote Sensing Hydrology Center, National Weather Service, NOAA, Chanhassen, MO, USA, Phone 952-361-6610 , Fax 952-361-6634, cline@ nohrsc.nws.gov
4US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab, 72 Lyme Road, Hanover, NH, USA, Phone 603-646-4219, Fax 603-646-4278, bert@hanover-crrel.army.mil
Cold land areas, cold areas of the Earth's land surface where water is frozen either seasonally or permanently, form a major component of Earth's hydrologic system, and interact significantly with the global weather and climate system, the geosphere, and the biosphere. The influence of seasonally and permanently frozen land surfaces extends to engineering in cold regions, trafficability for humans and other animals, and a variety of hazards and costs associated with living in cold lands.
The Cold Land Processes Pathfinder (CLPP) mission concept has been developed by the NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program's Cold Land Processes Working Group to measure critical components of the terrestrial cryosphere. The concept will utilize synergistic active and passive microwave remote sensing to address broad NASA Earth Science Enterprise objectives in hydrology, water resources, ecology, and atmospheric sciences. The CLPP employs a combination of dual-frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (C- and Ku-band) and dual-frequency radiometers (18- and 37-GHz). The radar and radiometer sensors share a ~2-m reflector antenna with a near-nadir viewing angle. The SAR measurement resolution is better than 100m, and the passive radiometer footprint is less than 5 km. The swath width is on the order of 25 km. Thus, the CLPP will provide a nearly ideal combination of multi-frequency microwave measurements, but at fewer locations around the Earth than an operational mission might.
The CLPP measurements will provide, for the first time, a set of microwave measurements with ideal characteristics to measure and characterize snow over land. The CLPP SAR component is based on a heritage of ground studies and the SIR-C/X-SAR experiment, which demonstrated the ability to measure key snow properties using physically based (i.e. first-principle radiative transfer response to snow properties) retrieval algorithms based on dual-frequency SAR. The CLPP radiometer component is based on extensive understanding of passive microwave remote sensing of snow, and a nearly three-decade legacy of snow estimation using SMMR, SSM/I, and now AMSR. The coarse resolution (~30 km) of these passive sensors, and the significant problems created by complex mixed pixels has limited this approach to empirically based retrievals that are typically valid only for relatively simple terrain. By pairing high-frequency SAR with dramatically improved-resolution radiometry, the CLPP will yield a long-awaited breakthrough in global snow measurement. Frequent reliable measurements of snow water equivalent and snow wetness, even within the limited swaths of this pathfinder, will comprise an improvement in snow measurement several orders of magnitude better than provided by existing ground observation networks.
This work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Abstract Categories: Science Management, Coordination, and Resources
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