ABoVE: High Resolution Cloud-Free Snow Cover Extent and Snow Depth, Alaska, 2001-2017

This dataset provides estimates of maximum snow cover extent (SCE) and snow depth for each 8-day composite period from 2001 to 2017 at 1 km resolution across Alaska. The study area covers the majority land area of Alaska except for areas covered by perennial ice/snow or open water. A downscaling scheme was used in which Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) global reanalysis 0.5 degree snow depth data were interpolated to a finer 1 km spatial grid. In the methods used, the downscaling scheme incorporated MODIS SCE (MOD10A2) to better account for the influence of local topography on the 1km snow distribution patterns. For MODIS cloud-contaminated pixels, persistent and patchy cloud cover conditions were improved by applying an elevation-based spatial filtering algorithm to predict snow occurrence. Cloud-free MODIS SCE data were then used to downscale MERRA-2 snow depth data. For each snow-covered 1 km pixel indicated by the MODIS data, the snow depth was estimated based on the snow depth of the neighboring MERRA-2 0.5 grid cell, with weights predicted using a spatial filter.