Neel Mehta
NASA plans to hold a media day on Feb. 13 at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado to discuss an agency project that aims to measure the amount of water in snow with remote sensing methods.
More than 100 scientists from U.S., Europe and Canada will test various sensors and techniques to optimize snow measurements over different terrains as part of the SnowEx campaign, NASA said Tuesday.
The multiyear effort will kick off in February and gather airborne and ground-based measurements.
NASA estimates that 17 percent of the world’s population depends on seasonal snow and glaciers for water and that 75 percent of water used in the western U.S. comes from snow.
Satellites work to measure snow-covered areas but cannot consistently calculate the amount of water contained in snow across all terrains, the space agency noted.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages SnowEx while the Terrestrial Hydrology Program of NASA’s earth science division sponsors the campaign.
