WHATS THE DEAL WITH THE SNOW COVER IN THE NGM/ETA/AVN?
New NESDIS daily 23-km snowcover/sea-ice anal A new daily, updated, 23-km, N. Hemisphere snowcover and sea-ice analysis. Its produced daily in the afternoon by a trained NESDIS satellite analyst on an interactive dual-screen workstation, wherein multiple data sources are called up, inspected, overlaid, differenced, etc by the analyst and he/she modifies the previous day’s product to produce a current update. The chief data sources are 1) time-looped geostationary VIS and IR imagery, 2) AVHRR polar orbiter VIS and IR imagery, 3) observer reported snowdepths, 4) NOHRSC snowdepth analyses, 5) SSM/I retrievals of snowcover and sea ice, and 6) National Ice Center (NIC) sea ice analyses. THIS 23-KM DAILY PRODUCT PROVIDES VASTLY SUPERIOR SEA-ICE COVER INITIAL CONDITIONS FOR THE ETA MODEL (compared with the former weekly 190-km NESDIS sea-ice cover used by the Eta Model). The combination of the Eta model resolution increase from 48-km to 32-km, combined with the upgrade of the sea-ice product
