Assessment of Satellite and Reanalysis Cold Season Snowfall Estimates Over Arctic Sea Ice

Abstract

This work presents a systematic assessment of precipitation estimates from satellite and reanalysis products over Arctic sea ice by reconstructing snow depths from precipitation products and comparing them with snow depth observations from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Operation IceBridge (OIB). Results show that the observed snow depth pattern is generally captured through reconstruction of snow depth using various precipitation products, but the use of passive microwave precipitation estimates results in significant underestimation of the snow depth. By using CloudSat monthly precipitation rate, to adjust the Global Precipitation Climatology Product (GPCP V1.3), the modified product (GPCP V1.3-mod) shows improved statistics over GPCP V1.3 as compared with OIB snow depth observations. Snow depth reconstructed from ERA-Int precipitation rate outperformed other products by showing the highest correlation coefficient and lowest root-mean-square error (RMSE). ERA5 shows largerRMSEthan ERA-Int, while MERRA-2 results in large overestimation of snow depth and largerRMSEcompared to GPCP and other reanalysis products.