Simulation of emission properties and snow-soil system status of a melting thin snow pack

Simulation of brightness temperature and related snow parameters is essential to understand the microwave emission property and its evolution with change of the snow-soil system status. In this paper, a typical thin snow pack on North China Plain is measured on Nov 13–16th, 2009 at Luancheng test site HUT (Helsinki University of Technology) wet snow emission model is used to predict the brightness temperatures at 10.65, 18.7 and 36.5 GHz. A physically-based snow process model, SNTHERM (SNow THERmal Model), is applied to simulate the snow melting process. The measured snow density and grain size is compared with SNTHERM prediction and HUT inputs. Results show that the application of snow emission model and process model can explain the variation trend of wet snow emission properties well.