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Remote sensing of snow
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1987
[PDF-815.24 KB]
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Description:Detection of natural gamma radiation emissions from the Earth has been used to measure the water equivalent of snow. Gamma ray detection must be carried out from aircraft at low altitudes (about 150 m) because of the significant atmospheric attenuation of the radiation. Background gamma radiation of the soil is obtained before the snow falls, and subsequent flights are flown to measure the gamma radiation through the attenuating snow cover. The degree of attenuation is related to the snow water equivalent through various calibration curves. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (N3AA) National Weather Service has an operational program to obtain such data on the shallow snowpack's of the high plains of the upper Midwest United States (Carroll and Voss, 1984). Although results have been encouraging, there are drawbacks to this method. Deep mountainous snowpacks may drastically attenuate the gamma radiation, thus limiting its usefulness, and mountainous terrain presents obvious safety problems for aircraft. In addition, interpretation of the data becomes more confusing when the soil moisture level changes significantly between the calibration flight made before the snow and the snow season flights. Because of the low altitude of the flights and narrow width of the data swath that is obtained, the gamma radiation method is confined to measurements of limited index lines (Rango, 1985).
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