Assimilation of passive microwave AMSR-2 satellite observations in a snowpack evolution model over North-Eastern Canada

Over northeastern Canada, the amount of water stored in a snowpack, estimated by its snow water equivalent (SWE) amount, is a key variable for hydrological applications. The limited number of weather stations driving snowpack models over large and remote northern areas generates great uncertainty in SWE evolution. A data assimilation (DA) scheme was developed to improve SWE estimates by updating meteorological forcing data and snowpack states using passive microwave (PMW) satellite observations without using any surface-based data. In this DA experiment, a particle filter with a Sampled Importance Resampled algorithm (SIR) was applied and an inflation technique of the observation error matrix was developed to avoid ensemble degeneracy. The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – 2 (AMSR-2) brightness temperatures (TB) observations were assimilated into a chain of models composed of the Crocus multi-layer snowpack model and radiative transfer models. The microwave snow emission model (Dense Media Radiative Transfer – Multi-Layers (DMRT-ML)), the vegetation transmissivity model (ω–τopt), and atmospheric and soil radiative transfer models were calibrated to simulate the contributions from the snowpack, the vegetation and the soil, respectively, at the top of the atmosphere. DA experiments were performed over 12 stations where daily continuous SWE measurements were acquired during 4 winters (2012–2016). Best SWE estimates are obtained with the assimilation of the TBs at 11, 19 and 37 GHz in vertical polarizations. The overall SWE bias is reduced by 71% compared to original SWE simulations, from 23.7 kg m−2 without assimilation to 6.9 kg m−2 with the assimilation of the three frequencies. The overall SWE relative percentage of error (RPE) is 14.6 % for sites with a fraction of forest cover below 75 %, which is in the range of accuracy needed for hydrological applications. This research opens the way for global applications to improve SWE estimates over large and remote areas, even when vegetation contributions are up to 50 % of the PMW signal.