Spatial and temporal variability of wet snow in the French mountains using a color-space based segmentation technique on Sentinel-1 SAR images

Abstract

We develop and evaluate a new methodology of wet snow detection over the French mountains using a colour space segmentation technique applied to SAR image time series during the period ranging from August 2016 to August 2020. Wet snow products are evaluated against snow products from optical measurements and snow simulations from a state-of-the-art snowpack model. The variability of wet snow, in space and time, is examined to infer knowledge about the seasonal and inter-annual variability of wet snow at the scale of the French mountain massifs.