Fractional Snow Covered Area at Ny-Ålesund (Svalbard, Norway) 2015-2019

The produced dataset (in netCDF v4 format) contains the estimation of the Factional Snow Cover (FSC) in different sites located in Svalbard islands. We considered areas that complete the already available datasets and we focused the attention to the Ny-Ålesund area (Svalbard - Norway) (78.917° N, 11.933° E) where different facilities are available for supporting the use of terrestrial photography. One asset is the Zeppelin observatory, located on a panoramic spot where cameras are operating since 2000, and one is the Climate Change Tower (CCT) where we deployed a camera in 2018 (Figure 1). While the Zeppelin camera, operated by the Norwegian Polar Institute, offers a long time-series coupled with a pan-tilt-zoom device (4 different views daily), the CCT device was installed in order to cover the hidden side of the coastal plain not visible from the observatory. Furthermore, the CCT camera provided highly spatial and time resolved (hourly) images that were also below the cloud layer.

本次构建的数据集采用netCDF v4格式存储，涵盖斯瓦尔巴群岛各站点的积雪覆盖率（Fractional Snow Cover, FSC）估算结果。研究团队选取了可补充现有公开数据集的区域，并将研究重点聚焦于挪威斯瓦尔巴群岛的新奥尔松（Ny-Ålesund）区域（北纬78.917°，东经11.933°），该区域配备了支撑地面摄影观测所需的各类配套设施。该区域设有两处核心观测平台：其一为齐柏林观测站，地处视野绝佳的全景点位，其搭载的相机自2000年起持续运行；其二为气候变化塔（Climate Change Tower, CCT），我们于2018年在此处架设了专用相机（见图1）。由挪威极地研究所运维的齐柏林相机搭载了平移-俯仰-变焦设备，可每日获取4组不同视角的长时序观测数据；而气候变化塔相机的布设初衷，在于覆盖齐柏林观测站无法观测到的海岸平原背侧区域。此外，气候变化塔相机可提供高时空分辨率的逐小时影像，且拍摄视角均处于云层下方。