A new global Snow Extent product based on ATSR-2 and AATSR

The ESA project GlobSnow develops products and services for snow extent and snow water equivalent. The time series of Snow Extent (SE) products will cover the whole seasonally snow-covered Earth for the years 1995-2010 based on the optical sensors ERS-2 ATSR-2 and Envisat AATSR data. A laboratory processing chain has been developed for testing and improving algorithms in an iterative process. The final version of the laboratory processing chain will function as a reference system for the implementation of an operational system for production of the full time series of products as well as near-real-time products produced on a daily basis. The first version of the SE product set spanning 15 years of the Northern Hemisphere is expected to be ready by the end of 2010 and will be made freely available.