Evaluation of stereology for snow microstructure measurement and microwave emission modeling: a case study
- 20 March 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in International Journal of Digital Earth
- Vol. 14 (10), 1316-1336
- https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2021.1902006
Abstract
Reliable microstructure measurement of snow is a requirement for microwave radiative transfer model validation. Snow specific surface area (SSA) can be measured using stereological methods, in which snow samples are cast in the field and photographed in the laboratory. Processing stereology photographs manually by counting intersections of test cycloids with air–ice boundaries reduces the problems in binary segmentation. This paper is a case study to evaluate the repeatability of the manually stereology interpretation by two independent research groups. We further assessed how uncertainty in snow SSA influences simulated brightness temperature (TB) driven by the Microwave Emission Model of Layered Snowpacks (MEMLS), and how stereology compares to Near Infrared (NIR) camera and hand lens. Data was obtained from two alpine snow profiles from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Results showed that stereological SSA values measured by two groups are highly consistent, and the ground radiometer measured TB at 19 and 37 GHz was successfully predicted (RMSEDg) measurements have larger errors. This conclusion was not sensitive to uncertainty in the free parameters of TB modeling.Keywords
Funding Information
- NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program (NNX09AM10G)
- Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20100300)
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