Satellite inspired hydrology in an uncertain future: a H SAF and HEPEX workshop

EUMETSAT FRACTIONAL SNOW COVER PRODUCTS

Burak Simsek, Kenan Bolat, Matias Takala, Zuhal Akyurek and Ali Nadir Arslan
Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) Arctic Space Centre, Finland
E-mail: burak.simsek@fmi.fi

ABSTRACT

EUMETSAT snow cover products namely H12 and H35 are presented. Products H12 (SN-OBS-3) and H35 (SN-OBS-3P) are fractional snow cover (FSC) products from EUMETSAT. Both of them are based on multi-channel analysis of AVHRR instrument placed on NOAA and MetOp satellites. H12 is a daily produced operational product with spatial resolution of 1 to 2 km covering the region of longitudes -25 West, 45 East and latitudes 75 North, 25 South. The algorithm uses transmissivity map to account in the forest canopy effect and combines multiple satellite passes during the day to obtain less cloudy images in the end of the 24 hours interval. H12 is produced both for flat and mountainous lands as it uses a slightly different algorithm for mountainous regions and the final product is the merge of these flat and mountainous products. H35 is essentially the extended version of H12 from pan-European region to Northern Hemisphere and it uses the same algorithm used in H12.