An improvement in ICESat-2 ATL03 snow depth estimation: a case study in the Tuolumne Basin, USA
Most of the Earth’s snow mass is stored in the Northern Hemisphere mountains, making accurate quantitative estimates of mountainous snow mass crucial for understanding the global hydrological cycle. The ICESat-2 satellite with a high-resolution laser altimeter enables detailed snow distribution mapp...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis Group
2025-08-01
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| Series: | International Journal of Digital Earth |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/17538947.2025.2505628 |
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| Summary: | Most of the Earth’s snow mass is stored in the Northern Hemisphere mountains, making accurate quantitative estimates of mountainous snow mass crucial for understanding the global hydrological cycle. The ICESat-2 satellite with a high-resolution laser altimeter enables detailed snow distribution mapping but faces uncertainties in snow depth estimation below the 100-m scale in mountains. To address this challenge, we improved the ICESat-2 ATL03 snow depth estimation by applying filters for slope and photon coverage in the spatial aggregation from 20-m to 1-km scales, considering the influences of photon density, snow spatial heterogeneity, and ICESat-2 elevation errors in steep terrains. Validation in the Tuolumne River Basin, USA, demonstrated a significant improvement in the accuracy of snow depth estimation. The mean absolute error (MAE) was 0.31 m for all slopes and 0.17 m for slopes less than 10° at the 20-m scale, indicating a 40% increase in accuracy compared with previous studies. As the snow depth was aggregated to 1 km, the MAE respectively decreased to 0.21 and 0.13 m. This study examined the potential of using ICESat-2 for estimating snow depth in mountainous regions across various spatial scales, providing more reliable snow depth estimates in data-scarce mountainous regions. |
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| ISSN: | 1753-8947 1753-8955 |