Contributions at EGU26

Our senior researcher, Valentina Premier, presented two contributions from the SNOWCOP project on Tuesday 5th at EGU26.

In the oral presentation, “𝘚𝘕𝘖𝘞𝘊𝘖𝘗: 𝘈𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘏𝘪𝘨𝘩-𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘙𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘚𝘞𝘌 𝘙𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘈𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘢 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘙𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨”, she shared first results from the Maipo River Basin test site. The work combines Copernicus and other remote sensing data with an enhanced temperature index (ETI) model to reconstruct snow water equivalent (SWE).

She also presented a PICO presentation on behalf of Carlo Marin and the ESA team: “Evaluating the Use of NRB Sentinel-1 Products for High-Resolution SWE Reconstruction in Mountain Regions.” This study investigates how Normalized Radar Backscatter (NRB) can help detect snowmelt phases and improve SWE estimates.

Key takeaways:

• Comparison with a state-of-the-art dataset (Cortés & Margulis, 2017) highlights differences driven by backward vs. forward modeling approaches

• The ETI model shows limitations, particularly in simulating early melt under low energy input conditions

• NRB Sentinel-1 backscatter provides high-quality, analysis-ready data that can be directly integrated into workflows, improving melt timing detection in SWE reconstruction