dataset · Global
Snow water equivalent for the Northern Hemisphere from 1979 to present derived from satellite observations
Snow water equivalent (SWE) is an important variable indicating the amount of accumulated snow on land surfaces. SWE describes the amount of liquid water in a snowpack that would be formed if the snowpack was completely melted. This dataset is useful for monitoring snow conditions, freshwater storage, and climate studies. It provides daily estimates of SWE for the Northern Hemisphere from 1979 to present derived from passive microwave radiometer (PMR) measurements onboard polar-orbiting satellit
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Licence: other
Evidence quality: 33.4
Listed in cds public catalogue API on 2026-10-16; relevance/value screened (haiku).
Metadata checked: 2026-10-14T13:20:00.000Z
What's in it
- Data offered docs-verified
- snow water equivalent · snow water equivalent uncertainty
- Coverage docs-verified
- Northern Hemisphere terrestrial non-mountainous regions, excluding glaciers and Greenland · January 1979 to present
- Resolution docs-verified
- 0.1° x 0.1° latitude-longitude grid; daily and monthly temporal resolution
- Update frequency docs-verified
- Regular quarterly updates
- Formats docs-verified
- NetCDF-4
- Access docs-verified
- Open licence: Creative Commons Attribute 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) per docs; no price stated; entry metadata lists licence as 'other'
Useful for
- Use cases llm-inferred
- Winter snowpack storage baseline for snowmelt-related flood risk context in FRA work · Historical SWE context for climate change sensitivity studies on UK-relevant catchments · Freshwater storage assessment for water resources consultancy reporting
- Audience llm-inferred
- flood consultants · hydrologists · water resources engineers · climate change specialists · GIS analysts
Limitations
- Constraints llm-inferred
- Excludes mountainous terrain, glaciers and Greenland, so those areas are unrepresented · 0.1° (about 11 km) grid is coarse for small catchment or site-scale analysis · Quarterly update cycle makes it unsuitable for near-real-time monitoring · Hemisphere-wide dataset with no UK-specific product, so subsetting is required · Only version 1.0 is listed in the docs, with no version history · Docs state CC BY 4.0 while entry metadata says 'other', so the licence should be checked before reuse
Evidence
- https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/api/catalogue/v1/collections/satellite-snow-water-equivalent
- https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets/satellite-snow-water-equivalent
Check upstream coverage, uncertainty and licence before use. Station observations are not forecasts or design levels.