Assessing the utility of modis for monitoring snow and sea ice extent,” in European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories Proceedings

With the launch of the MODIS instrument on NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra satel-lite, a new era of cryospheric monitoring from space has begun. For the first time daily, global maps of snow cover and sea ice extent are being produced in a fully automated fashion from space-borne measurements in optical wavelengths. The capabilities and limitations of the MODIS instrument for measuring snow cover and sea ice extent will be highlighted in several case studies in which the MODIS products are compared with other available operational analyses. The 1 km resolution MODIS sea ice product, as determined from both solar reflective and terrestrial emissive bands, will be compared to relevant sea ice data sets and individual MODIS channel data. The 500 m MODIS snow cover product will be compared to both NOAA operational analyses based on multiple satel-lite sensors and individual channel data. (se