Dr. Steve Margulis

UCLA Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

“A Landsat-era Sierra Nevada Snow Reanalysis (1985-2015)”

A newly developed state-of-the-art snow water equivalent (SWE) reanalysis dataset over the Sierra Nevada (USA) based on the assimilation of remotely sensed fractional snow covered area data over the Landsat 5-8 period of record (1985-2015) will be presented. The method (fully Bayesian), resolution (daily, 90-meter), temporal extent (31 years), and accuracy provide a unique dataset for investigating snow processes over a regionally important mountain range. The dataset is used to characterize the peak SWE climatology to provide a basic accounting of the stored snowpack water in the Sierra Nevada over the last 31 years. The ongoing drought in California contains the two lowest snowpack years (water years 2014, 2015) and the three of the four driest years over the examined record. Analysis aimed at characterizing the extreme 2015 year and how the system may respond to the recent drought will also be presented.

Hosted by UCLA Department of Geography