Hand-dug snow pit measurements (SnowEx 2017)
What it measures. Hands-on measurements from snow pits dug by people, recording snow temperature, density, layering, grain size, wetness, depth, and how much water the snowpack holds.
How it's made. Gathered on the ground by field teams at two Colorado sites (Grand Mesa and Senator Beck Basin) during NASA's SnowEx 2017 campaign.
How & where you'd use it. Provides ground-truth data to check and improve satellite and airborne snow measurements, valuable for water-supply and snow science.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2017-02-06 → 2017-02-25
- Measured byGROUND-BASED OBSERVATIONS (SNOW DENSITY CUTTER, STEEL MEASURING TAPE, THERMOMETERS, VISUAL OBSERVATIONS)
- Processing levelLevel 3
- Spatial extent-107.8, 37.8, -107.65, 38
- FormatsCSV
- StatusCOMPLETE
What you can do with it
- Measure sea ice, snow cover and glaciers
- Watch ice-sheet elevation change
- Track freeze/thaw and permafrost
Official description
This data set contains measurements of snow temperature, density, stratigraphy, grain size, wetness, depth, and snow water equivalent (SWE) for snow pits at two study sites in Colorado, USA: Grand Mesa and Senator Beck Basin. Data were collected during the NASA SnowEx 2017 campaign.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="SNEX17_SnowPits",
version="1",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from NSIDC_CPRDBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
- Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
- Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
- A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
- Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- SnowEx17 Community Snow Pit Measurements, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Snow Pit Sheet and Explanation VIEW RELATED INFORMATION