NASA Develops Instruments To Learn Snow Layers From Space

Illustration of the snowy mountain area observed by SNOWWI (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA NASA's Office of Earth Science Technology (ESTO) and a number of researchers from the University of Massachusetts are developing radars that can measure snow masses. This radar is named SNOWWI.

Currently, climate change is causing many changes, both in summer and winter. This phenomenon has had many impacts, one of which is the change in the number of annual freshwater supplies in several states.

According to NASA's explanation, mountainous areas should flow water into rivers, reservoirs, and where people supply fresh water during the summer. Unfortunately, the flow of water is slowing as winter reaches its highest point.

Therefore, NASA and researchers developed SNOWWI, a double frequency synthetic radar apertur, which is expected to help the scientific community. This technology has been developed in prototype form and NASA has tested it.

At the beginning of this year, the SNOWWI prototype was successfully flown aboard a small, double-engine plane. Not only successfully flying, this prototype also managed to collect data related to the snowfall of winter in the area.

"I say the big development is that we have switched from hardware in the laboratory to something that generates meaningful data," said Paul Siqueira, Professor of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, a researcher named Derksen said that SNOWWI uses two frequencies, namely low and high. Both frequencies are needed to study the consistency of the snow layer and determine its total depth.

"With two frequencies, we can better separate the influence of the micro snow structure from the influence of the snow depth," Derksen said. One good frequency, two better frequencies.

SNOWWI, abbreviation of Snow Water-equivalent Wide Swath Interferometer and Scatterometer, can map 100 square kilometers of snowy terrain within 30 minutes. This mapping is carried out at an altitude of 4 kilometers.

The higher the range, the wider the field of view, so NASA and the University of Massachusetts want to place SNOWWI in outer space. If it is completed, this instrument will be launched via satellite missions.