Snow cover monitoring with MODIS satellite data in Alaska’s national parks, 2000-2015
Cherry JE, Zhu J, Kirchner PB. 2017. Snow cover monitoring with MODIS satellite data in Alaska’s national parks, 2000-2015. Natural Resource Report. NPS/SWAN/NRR—2017/1566. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
Snow cover has a profound effect on flora, fauna, and the physical environment of Alaska’s National Parks and Preserves. The generation of the datasets presented here is motivated by questions about potential changes in snow cover in recent decades. Geospatial time series and statistical analyses of the first and last days of snow cover, the continuous snow season (CSS), and their trends are performed with a snow cover extent product derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite sensor for the Alaska National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Networks and the state as a whole (2001-2015). The end of the CSS is a relatively robust measure of change in the spring snowpack, driven by changes in temperature and precipitation. Changes in the length of the CSS are more uncertain because cloud cover in the autumn, in particular, can lead to errors in the estimates of the start of the snow season. Results of parametric and non-parametric statistical tests are similar. CSS trends at various stations seem to track with temperature trends during the melt season, but are not statistically significant. Precipitation factors are hard to discern due to the difficult nature of precipitation measurement in the Arctic. The Northwest Alaskan Arctic stands out as the biggest region where the length of the CSS has decreased significantly and the end of the CSS is coming a week or two earlier in 2015 than it did in 2001. Upstream and downstream of Northwest Alaska—Eastern Siberia and the Upper Yukon basin in Southern Yukon Territory and Northern British Columbia, Canada—show the opposite trends.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Cherry, Jessica; Zhu, Jiang; Kirchner, Peter
- Date of Issue
- 2017-12
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- AKR , AKRO , ALAG , ANIA , ARCN , BELA , CAKN , CAKR , DENA , GAAR , GLBA , KATM , KEFJ , KLGO , KOVA , LACL , NOAT , NRSS , SEAN , SITK , SWAN , WRST , YUCH
- Keywords
- Alaska, climate, continuous snow season, first day of snow cover, last day of snow cover, snow cover, snow season, weather
- Subjects
- Ecological Framework: Air and Climate | Weather and Climate | Weather and Climate