Determination of the dominant spatial modes of terrestrial snow cover over North America using passive microwave derived data

Passive microwave derived measures of snow water equivalent (SWE) provide an excellent means of monitoring snow cover because of a broad spatial resolution, daily orbital coverage, and all weather imaging capabilities. Combining analysis of this remotely sensed data with gridded atmospheric pressure and temperature data will allow improvement in the understanding of the complex interactions between seasonal terrestrial snow cover and overlying atmospheric systems. This study utilizes one winter season of Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) passive microwave SWE imagery and National Meteorological Center (NMC) gridded atmospheric data to examine an analysis methodology which utilizes both principal components analysis (PCA) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to link surface and atmospheric processes. The short time series was limited by data availability, but is still useful for isolating the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology, which can be applied in the future to the ever increasing time series of SWE imagery. Results show a meridional circulation pattern is linked to periods of snow accumulation, while a zonal circulation pattern corresponds to persistent snow ablation.