Fractional snow cover area from terrestrial photography in Svalbard Islands (Norway).

The availability of different webcam in Svalbard islands (Norway) offers the opportunity to network different data sources useful for preparing new snow cover products. The fraction of snow cover is a critical essential variable that is of interest especially in polar areas where remotely sensed data are not continuous. This topic is particularly important in climate change studies and it is included in the iCupe project, where different information at different spatial and time resolutions will be combined in order to develop knowledge about the Arctic region. The presented activity is aimed to network different cameras at the ground, with different field of view and formats, and the final outcome is the preparation of a dataset about the fraction of snow cover. This data source will be aimed to support the estimation of parameters that characterize the cryosphere using remotely sensed data, with a particular attention to data obtained in the framework of the Copernicus program. The availability of this dataset in a "natural" laboratory such as Svalbard islands will support the reduction of the gap between remotely sensed data and modeling activities. This added value will be very important considering the higher spatial resolution of the sensors recently deployed. The dataset will be based on re-using data obtained from public repositories such as the digital elevation model of Svalbard, the available webcam imagery in Svalbard and satellite products from different missions/sensors (Landsat, Sentinel and MODIS). All the available data will be integrated in order to estimate the fraction of snow cover, at different spatial resolutions, for each satellite mission. These estimations, computed at different sites in Svalbard islands, will offer the opportunity to better integrate results obtained by remote sensing with modeling and air-snow interactions studies.