Passive Microwave Signatures and Retrieval of High-Latitude Snowfall over Open Oceans and Sea Ice: Insights from Coincidences of GPM and CloudSat Satellites

Sajad Vahedizade, Ardeshir Ebtehaj, Yalei You, Sarah E. Ringerud, F. Joseph Turk

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

This article studies changes in microwave signals of oceanic snowfall in response to the formation of snow-covered sea ice using active and passive coincident data from the radar and radiometer onboard the CloudSat and the global precipitation measurement satellites. Using reanalysis data of liquid and ice water path as well as satellite retrievals of sea ice snow-cover depth, spectral regions are determined over which the snowfall signatures are likely to be obscured or falsely detected. Relying on an a priori database populated with the active-passive coincidences, a Bayesian snowfall retrieval algorithm is presented that links a $k$ -nearest neighbor matching with the inverse Gaussian estimator used in the Goddard profiling algorithm. Without relying on any ancillary data of air temperature, the results demonstrate that over open oceans (sea ice), we can passively retrieve the CloudSat active snowfalls with a true positive rate of 92 (85%) and the root mean squared error of 0.24 (0.15) mmh-1.

Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalIEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Volume60
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 22 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
IEEE

Keywords

  • Bayesian retrieval algorithms
  • CloudSat satellite
  • global precipitation measurement (GPM)
  • passive microwave
  • satellite snowfall retrieval

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