Reflectance of Solar Light From Wet Snowpack: Direct and Inverse Problems

Wet snow is an important component of the cryosphere. It appears darker in the visible as compared to the fresh dry snow. This indicates the increased levels of light absorption in snow, which leads to the acceleration of snowmelt further increased by the exposure of light absorbing impurities, in turn having important climatic effects. In this paper a simple analytical model for the wet snow spectral reflectance is introduced and applied to remote sensing of snow from ground and space. The accuracy of the model is studied using experimental measurements of the light reflectance from wet snow.