NASA measuring US Snowpack

[jaysunn]

Thought this was interesting.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-154&rn=news.xml&rst=3783

 

[Newpylong]

So sick...

 

[fbrissette]

The article is a bit misleading. You cannot measure snow water equivalent (SWE). The LIDAR measures snow depth by simply comparing a survey made in the summer with a survey in the winter (at a very high precision). Snow depth has to be converted into SWE using empirical methods that may or may not include albedo which is a measure of snow pack age.

Anyway, this is high tech stuff that is much better than any other available method. It is also a very expensive method...

It would be interesting to do a mid winter survey of ski resort to see by how much they lie about their snowpack depth.