Expected Data Products - Cryosphere -

Monitoring of polar regions and snow/ice regions

• GLI Cryosphere Products
• Standard Products
  • Snow/Sec Ice Covered Area
  • Snow Impurities
  • Snow Grain Size (865nm channel)
  • Snow Grain Size (1.64um channel) *1
  • Snow Surface Temperature *1
    *1: Added in Version 2
• Research Products
  • Sea Ice Monitoring
  • Aerosol Optical Thickness over Snow Surface

   

• Product release note (Ver.1~2, updated in Nov. 2004)
• A presentation material on the changes of version 2 products and the accuracies of the retrieval
• GLI Standard Product list
(Cryosphere)

 

An important role of the GLI mission is to monitor processes of the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere. Monitoring of the polar regions is especially important, since the effect of global warming is expected to be enhanced in these regions. Global warming simulations have indicated a strong relationship between the water budget on land area and the amount of sea ice. The change in snow and ice area coverage and the long-term change of permafrost also significantly affect the climate system in the polar regions. Detailed monitoring of those phenomena is important for verifying global warming predictions. GLI has a 4-day recurrence and six 250m channels, which are most suitable for such detailed Earth's surface monitoring.

Snow physical parameters such as snow grain size and mass fraction of impurities mixed in snow layer are important parameters to be monitored from space in order to study the relationship between snow covered areas in the Polar Regions and a climate change such as global warming. GLI will observe temporal and spatial variations of snow grain size and snow impurities as well as snow/sea-ice covered area on a global scale.