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A. Bartsch:
"Ten years of SeaWinds QuikScat for circumpolar snow monitoring";
Talk: The 11th International Circumpolar Remote Sensing Symposium, Cambridge, United Kingdom; 2010-09-20 - 2010-09-24.

For 10 years (1999-2009) the SeaWinds instrument on board of QuikScat provided a 90% global daily coverage. Apart from its mission objective to support ocean-meteorological studies, it has been also used for land applications. As it has been operating in Ku-Band it has been mostly applied to snow applications but also for monitoring vegetation phenology, urban mapping and soil moisture. The majority of developed algorithms are change detection methods. Some exploit the availability of multiple daily measurements at high latitudes (up to 10 towards 75°N). The high temporal frequency was a rather unique feature among contemporaneously operating scatterometer.

This paper reviews applications such as detection of snowmelt timing as well as mid-winter thaw and refreeze. Short term thawing of the snow surface and subsequent refreeze can lead to the formation of ice crusts. These events are related to specific meteorological conditions such us rain-on-snow events and/or temporary increase of air temperature above zero degree Celsius. The structure change in the snow pack has adverse effect especially on wild life and also the local community related to reindeer herding.