Characterization Of Snow Grain Size In The Near-infrared And Microwave Wavelengths

Abstract

Microwave backscatter and near-infrared reflectance are sensitive to snowpack gram size. Parameters describing the height and width of the lognormal ice particle size distribution are obtained through stereologic analysis of snow samples. The magnitude of the difference between the optical and microwave effective grain size is directly proportional to the width of the particle size distribution. The optically-effective grain size corresponds to the particle size distribution in the surface layer of the snowpack while the microwave grain size is an integrated value for the entire snowpack.