NASA Investigates Water Supply in Snow

  • Released Thursday, February 16, 2017
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This February, a NASA-led research campaign called SnowEx kicked off in Colorado. The 5-year study will advance global measurements of how much snow is on the ground at any given time and how much liquid water is contained in that snow. The amount of water in snow plays a huge role in water availability for drinking water, agriculture, and hydropower.

Teams of 50 researchers are stationed at Grand Mesa and Senator Beck Basin over a three-week period to measure snow using a variety of snow-sensing instruments and techniques. Ground measurements will allow the team to validate the remotely sensed measurements acquired by multiple sensors on the various aircraft.

Data acquired from the SnowEx campaign will be stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and will be available to anyone to order at no cost, as is the case with all NASA data.

For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/

Complete transcript available.

Music credit: "Detective Analysis" by Laurent Dury [SACEM] from Killer Tracks Music

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Thursday, February 16, 2017.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:47 PM EDT.

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