NASA SNOWEX / CSO Collaboration

The SNOWEX project, funded by NASA, seeks to improve the remote sensing capabilities of NASA. It blends intensive field campaigns and airborne measurements, with the goal of addressing the gaps in NASA’s abilities to measure and understand snow. A good read about the project can be found here.

During the 2020-2021 winter, there is an opportunity for the CSO project to contribute to the SNOWEX project. SNOWEX relies on ‘on the ground’ measurements of snow depth and other variables. And, well, CSO participants are on the ground measuring snow. So, this is a perfect intersection of interests and the CSO team hopes that you will get out and collect as much data as possible! You don’t need to do anything different, just use your probe and phone as before to submit snow depth data.

You can view an interactive Google Map of the flight paths of the SNOWEX project and see where the closest one is to your home. These paths are concentrated in the western USA, so pan and zoom in until you see the rectangular footprints. If you are out recreating in one of these flight paths, help out both CSO and SNOWEX.

Measuring snow depth with a probe may not feel like rocket science, but it helps out NASA, so it actually is.