Monitoring Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) for estimating snow water volume in the HKH region

Background

The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) contains the largest reservoir of ice and snow outside the Earth’s polar ice sheets. There are few direct measurements of the snow water equivalent (SWE) – the volume of water stored in ice and seasonal snow. This makes predicting snow and ice melt and their contribution to runoff challenging. Even in retrospect, understanding the previous year’s snow water supply is difficult. For many regions in the HKH, seasonal snow and ice melt are a significant part of water supply, and accurate knowledge of the state of the snowpack early in the spring can provide awareness of summer and fall droughts.

Spaceborne remote sensing from optical and passive microwave sensors can inform our understanding of snow, ice, and the processes acting on these critical resources. This training will inform participants on ways to use passive microwave and optical remote sensing, and energy balance and climate models to improve our understanding of water supplies stored as ice and seasonal snow.

There is no specific technique for estimating SWE everywhere, hence, this training will provide participants with the necessary tools to determine the best approach for their region of interest. Participants will understand the benefits and limitations of various methods for SWE estimation.

The training will also cover a wide range of topics: fundamentals of snow science, snow remote sensing, SWE reconstruction, snow covered area analysis and historical contextualization, data visualization, and machine learning for water supply forecasting from seasonal snow through lectures and hands-on exercises. A mix of operational and research grade products and techniques will be presented in hands-on exercises. We will use in situ data, satellite remote sensing measurement, energy balance modeling, climate models, and machine learning in example watersheds in the HKH region to go through various techniques for data exploration and information extraction for water supply management.

ICIMOD and Cold World Consulting (CWC) will be conducting this training, within the framework of ICIMOD’s SERVIR Hindu Kush Himalaya (SERVIR-HKH) initiative, and as part of the institutional capacity building efforts with the NASA SERVIR Applied Sciences Team.