Assimilation of MODIS Snow Cover Fraction Observations into the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model

The NASA Catchment land surface model (CLSM) is the land model component used for the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA). Here, the CLSM versions of MERRA and MERRA-Land are evaluated using snow cover fraction (SCF) observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). Moreover, a computationally-efficient empirical scheme is designed to improve CLSM estimates of SCF, snow depth, and snow water equivalent (SWE) through the assimilation of MODIS SCF observations. Results show that data assimilation (DA) improved SCF estimates compared to the open-loop model without assimilation (OL), especially in areas with ephemeral snow cover and mountainous regions. A comparison of the SCF estimates from DA against snow cover estimates from the NOAA Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System showed an improvement in the probability of detection of up to 28% and a reduction in false alarms by up to 6% (relative to OL). A comparison of the model snow depth estimates against Canadian Meteorological Centre analyses showed that DA successfully improved the model seasonal bias from −0.017 m for OL to −0.007 m for DA, although there was no significant change in root-mean-square differences (RMSD) (0.095 m for OL, 0.093 m for DA). The time-average of the spatial correlation coefficient also improved from 0.61 for OL to 0.63 for DA. A comparison against in situ SWE measurements also showed improvements from assimilation. The correlation increased from 0.44 for OL to 0.49 for DA, the bias improved from −0.111 m for OL to −0.100 m for DA, and the RMSD decreased from 0.186 m for OL to 0.180 m for DA.