New paper on snow in Scotland!

Happy new year and with it brings a new paper published in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing entitled: “Spatial and temporal variations in 94 GHz radar backscatter from a springtime snowpack”.

You can access the paper here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10816080

In this study, we used the AVTIS2 94 GHz FMCW radar to map snow-covered mountain terrain in the Cairngorms, Scotland. The paper has three main outcomes:

• Mountain Topography: The radar acquired 3D point clouds over the Northern Corries of the Cairngorms, achieving point cloud accuracies comparable to previous studies (~2 m). This demonstrates that AVTIS2 can accurately map complex terrain in obscuring conditions.
• Snow Changes: Over 3 days, AVTIS2 detected increases in radar backscatter which we interpret to be due to changes in snow cover from a melting to a refrozen state.
• Avalanche Detection: Localised changes in radar backscatter were detected across a steep corrie slope. We interpret this change to be due to a potential failure of the snow surface, increasing surface roughness and therefore radar backscatter.

Overall, the results shows that 94 GHz radar has the potential to detect snow surface changes which has implications for understanding snow dynamics, hazards and conditions.