Field Measurements of Snow Cover Parameters for Scaling Studies, a component of the MSC 2003 AMSR-E Field Validation Campaign

Purpose: A multi-agency, multi-disciplinary field campaign led by the Climate Research Branch of the Meteorological Service of Canada was conducted out of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in February 2003. The general objective of the campaign was to acquire multi-scale passive microwave brightness temperatures, and complementary in situ datasets for the regional and local scale validation of spaceborne passive microwave snow water equivalent (SWE) retrievals, and to support research on SWE scaling. Ground, tower, airborne, and spaceborne passive microwave datasets were acquired with coincident snow surveys and detailed snowpack measurements corresponding to the scale of each microwave dataset.