A cloud-free MODIS snow cover dataset for the contiguous United States from 2000 to 2017

This article presents a cloud-free snow cover dataset
with a daily temporal resolution and 0.05° spatial resolution from March 2000
to February 2017 over the contiguous United States (CONUS). The dataset was
developed by completely removing clouds from the original NASA’s Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Snow Cover Area product (MOD10C1)
through a series of spatiotemporal filters followed by the Variational
Interpolation (VI) algorithm; the filters and VI algorithm were evaluated using
bootstrapping test. The dataset was validated over the period with the Landsat
7 ETM+ snow cover maps in the Seattle, Minneapolis, Rocky Mountains, and Sierra
Nevada regions. The resulting cloud-free snow cover captured accurately dynamic
changes of snow throughout the period in terms of Probability of Detection
(POD) and False Alarm Ratio (FAR) with average values of 0.955 and 0.179 for
POD and FAR, respectively. The dataset provides continuous inputs of snow cover
area for hydrologic studies for almost two decades. The VI algorithm can be
applied in other regions given that a proper validation can be performed.