Estimation of Snow Water Equivalent in Tibetan Plateau using Passive Microwave Radiation Data

Snow cover is an important component of a climate system, very sensitive to climate change, and can be an indicator of checking and monitoring global change. SSM/I brightness temperature data in January 1994, were used to estimate snow water equivalent (SWE) in this study. The frequencies of SSM/I data are used to retrieval snow depth are 19 and 37 GHz in vertical polarization. The results have shown all existing algorithms overestimated the snow depth in the Tibetan plateau. The reasons of overestimation of snow depth from several aspects, such as the water content of snowpack, large water bodies, rugged terrain, and the abnormal field snow depth data.