Enhancement of snowscat for tomographic observation capabilities

Abstract

The SnowScat device, a tower-mounted fully polarimetric scatterometer for measurements of the radar crosssection of snow at X-band up to Ku-band, has recently been enhanced to also support a tomographic profiling mode. The new tomographic profiling capability of SnowScat allows for performing high-resolution observations providing further insights into the complex electromagnetic interaction within snowpacks. In this paper, we present first results obtained from a series of tomographic profiles of a snowpack acquired with the enhanced SnowScat device at a test site of SLF in Davos, Switzerland, between Dec. 2014 and March 2015.