Moving Toward Comprehensive Snow Remote Sensing: What Now?
Town Hall Meeting, AGU Fall Meeting, 2014
Wednesday, December 17th
5:30 PM to 6:45 PM
Room "Foothill E”
San Francisco Marriott Marquis (55 4th Street)
Who are we? The NASA International Snow Working Group for Remote Sensing (iSWGR) was formed at the AGU Chapman Conference on Remote Sensing of the Terrestrial Water Cycle held February 2012 in Kona, Hawaii. The purpose of the group, which is open to all, is to advance the development of snow remote sensing in the U.S. and internationally. We are committed to educating the scientific community and public about the importance of snow, working to improve capabilities for snow remote sensing, and training the next generation of snow scientists. To date we have held three well-attended workshops and hosted two week-long training schools, one for snow field techniques and one for snow modeling, and we are currently preparing a Strategic Plan for Snow Remote Sensing. More information can be found at http://www.iswgr.org/.
What is our focus? Snow is one of our planet’s most precious resources, supporting much of the world’s agriculture, and underpinning critical industries like hydropower generation and winter outdoor recreation. With climate change altering the amount and timing of snowfall worldwide, we are committed to improving the scientific basis for providing accurate estimates of snow resources today and useful predictions of snow resources in the coming years. Our efforts focus on answering two questions: How much snow is there? and 2) How and why is the snow changing? The challenge with respect to snow is that we need to know these key attributes across both space and time across all cold regions. This is why we focus on snow remote sensing, as we believe it is the only way we are likely to provide the needed spatio-temporal data.
Why a Town Hall? Societal and scientific needs for snow data continue to increase, and there has been an explosion of potential new remote sensing technologies (lidar, altimetry, gravity) as well as improvement of existing technologies (visible and microwave). Yet at the same time we have seen major efforts to launch a satellite specifically for snow remote sensing prove unsuccessful, and have missed several opportunities for large sub-orbital research campaigns. Meanwhile NASA is headed into a new decadal survey within the year. If we are to do well in the survey, and if we are to improve our orbital and sub-orbital tools for snow remote sensing, the research community must pull together, and collectively work towards a series of field, modeling and remote sensing campaigns that help produce successful mission concepts.
What will be discussed? We want to hear from you, the community. We want energize our work in snow remote sensing research and development. Please plan to attend and be heard.
More info? matthew.sturm@gi.alaska.edu or edward.j.kim@nasa.gov
