Spatial distribution of snow water equivalent for the Niwot Ridge, 1996 - 2019

This dataset provides a daily estimation of snow water equivalent for the Niwot Ridge during snow melting period from 1997 to 2019 at 30-meter spatial resolution. The dataset includes two series of SWE data: 1) 1996-2007 daily SWE dataset is generated by Jepsen et al., (2012); 2) 2008-2019 daily SWE dataset is generated by Dr. Kehan Yang following the same method used by Jepsen et al., (2012). In brief, a physically based reconstruction model is used to calculate daily SWE backward from snow disappearance date to peak snow accumulation. The infilled hourly climate data set for C1, Saddle and D1 (data available at https://portal.edirepository.org/nis/mapbrowse?packageid=knb-lter-nwt.168.2) is interpolated and used as the meteorological forcing in the snow energy balance calculation of SWE reconstruction. The shortwave radiation is estimated by downscaling hourly product of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) using TOPORAD tool. The USGS Landsat Level-3 fractional snow-covered area product is used to proportion potential energy flux for snowmelt at the pixel scale. Please see detailed methods included with this data package for more details and references.