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Product details

Name	Snow Water Equivalent [5 Km]
Acronym	SWE
Description	Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) describes the equivalent amount of liquid water stored in the snow pack. It indicates the water column that would theoretically result should the whole snow pack melt instantaneously and is defined as product between the snow layer’s depth and density. Information about snow water equivalent is needed in applications such as flood forecasting, controlling the water level of power plant reservoirs, planning for forestry and crop irrigation and as input and control variable for many environment research purposes, including climate change research.
Note
Status	Operational
Group	GLC Cryosphere
Area	Global
Component	Bio-geophysical Parameters
Service	Copernicus Land Monitoring Service
Entrusted Entities	European Environment Agency Joint Research Centre
Created on	Nov. 6, 2017, 1:53 p.m.
Last updated on	April 16, 2024, 10 a.m.

Requirements

UID	Requirement	Level of definition	Relevant for	Criticality	Barriers	Note	Created on	Last updated on
206	Land Cover - Inland Water Bodies & Wetland Fraction	Speculative	Product generation	Essential	Accuracy Timeliness		Oct. 14, 2018, 12:49 p.m.	Dec. 20, 2021, 1:42 p.m.
272	Snow Satellite Estimates	Speculative	Product generation	Essential	Accuracy	High resolution snow mask	Oct. 14, 2018, 12:48 p.m.	July 27, 2022, 1:18 p.m.
295	Mountains, 100+ m resolution	Speculative	Product generation	Essential	Accuracy	Mountain mask is derived from ETOPO5 data (Etopo5 1988) by calculating topography variances	Oct. 14, 2018, 1:09 p.m.	Dec. 20, 2021, 1:40 p.m.
269	Land Cover / Land Use, 100+ m resolution	Speculative	Product generation	Essential	Accuracy Timeliness	Land use, and most importantly forest cover fraction, derived from ESA GlobCover 2009 300 m data (Bontemps et al. 2011).	Oct. 14, 2018, 12:46 p.m.	Dec. 20, 2021, 1:40 p.m.
268	Snow Depth Ground Measurements	Speculative	Product generation	Essential	Accuracy	Product generation: Snow Depth data through FMI near real-time weather observations database Also used for calibration and validation	Oct. 14, 2018, 12:44 p.m.	July 17, 2024, 2:45 p.m.
268	Snow Depth Ground Measurements	Reasonable	Calibration and validation	Desirable	Availability		July 25, 2024, 9:58 a.m.	July 25, 2024, 9:58 a.m.
188	Vegetation Ground Measurements	Speculative	Product generation	Essential	Accuracy Timeliness	Stem volume is required as an input parameter to the emission model to compensate for forest cover effects (Pulliainen et al., 1999; Kruopis et al., 1999); pixel average stem volumes are estimated by utilizing Northern Hemisphere-scale forest transmissivity map data (Metsämäki et al., 2015).	Oct. 14, 2018, 12:47 p.m.	Aug. 21, 2024, 5:22 p.m.