Skip to main content

Snow Cover/Extent Demonstrator from optical Sensors (SEDOS)

  • Duration: 2018 - 2025
  • Status: Ongoing

This study develops and implements a prototype processing system for a new generation of snow extent products from EUMETSAT Metop-SG/METimage (in SEDOS phase 1) , and lately, the FCI instrument onboard geostationary MTG-I satellites (SEDOS phase 2).

Project management
Sari Metsämäki (Syke)
Project team
Kirsikka Heinilä (Syke), ENVEO (coordinator)
Financiers
EUMETSAT
Partners
Environmental Earth Observation IT (ENVEO) (Austria), coordinator
Subject area
Climate, International, Research

In phase 1 the prototype system was demonstrated and evaluated using data from the optical sensors of Sentinel-3 in the absence of METimage. Currently, the focus is on the existing FCI data and the adaptation of Snow extent and Cloud screening algorithms to exploit its frequent (10 minutes interval)  daily observations. 

The objective of SEDOS is to develop, implement, demonstrate, and validate snow cover/extent production covering Europe, exploiting EUMETSAT Metop-SG/METimage and MTG-I/FCI data . In phase 1, in the absence of METimage, the prototype demonstrator was build based on a use of Sentinel-3 SLSTR data featuring similar spectral imaging bands. The current aim is to exploit geostationary satellite data from operationally working MTG-I FCI, which provides data in high temporal frequency. The existing cloud screening method developed at Syke will be adjusted for FCI, as well as the method for snow extent, originally developed by Syke and further developed by ENVEO.  The snow extent products are validated against in-situ Snow Depth observation following the validation protocol adapted by ESA SnowPEx project. Phase 1 of the project was in 2018-2021 and the phase 2 is in 2024-2025.

More info:

International website of the project EUMETSAT SEDOS-2 (2024-2025) ENVEO (enveo.at)

International website of the project Snow Cover/Extent Demonstrator from optical Sensors (SEDOS) (eumetsat.int)

Senior scientist Sari Metsämäki, Finnish Environment Institute Syke, firstname.lastname@syke.fi