Snow status (wet/dry) in Antarctica from SMMR, SSM/I, AMSR-E and AMSR2 passive microwave radiometers

The dataset provides daily binary status (wet/dry) of the snowpack for each pixel at 25 or 12.5 km resolution in Antarctica. This status is retrieved from passive microwave observation at 19 GHz and horizontal polarisation, using an algorithm developed by Torinesi et al. 2013 and Picard and Fily, 2006.

The dataset comprises three timeseries. The longest starts in 1979 and includes observations from SMMR and SSM/I sensors. It has a coarse effective resolution of ~60km and has many data gaps especially during the SMMR period (<1987). The two other timeseries are from AMSR-E and AMSR2 sensors which features a twice-finer effective resolution, about ~25 km. There are less gaps except in 2011/2012 between AMSR-E and AMSR2.