Snow water equivalent (SWE) indicates the amount of accumulated snow on land surfaces; in other words the amount of water contained within the snowpack. The SWE product time series covers the period from 1979 to 2018. Northern Hemisphere SWE products are available at daily temporal resolution with alpine areas masked.

The product is based on data from the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) operated on National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Nimbus-7 satellite, the Special Sensor Microwave / Imager (SSM/I) and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager / Sounder (SSMI/S) carried onboard the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) 5D- and F-series satellites. The satellite bands provide spatial resolutions between 15 and 69 km. The retrieval methodology combines satellite passive microwave radiometer (PMR) measurements with ground-based synoptic weather station observations by Bayesian non-linear iterative assimilation. A background snow-depth field from re-gridded surface snow-depth observations and a passive microwave emission model are required components of the retrieval scheme.

The dataset was aimed to serve the needs of users working on climate research and monitoring activities, including the detection of variability and trends, climate modelling, and aspects of hydrology and meteorology.

The Finnish Meteorological Institute is responsible for the SWE product development and generation. For the period from 1979 to May 1987, the products are available every second day. From October 1987 till May 2018, the products are available daily. Products are only generated for the Northern Hemisphere winter seasons, usually from beginning of October till the middle of May. A limited number of SWE products are available for days in June and September; products are not available for the months July and August as there is usually no snow information reported on synoptic weather stations, which is required as input for the SWE retrieval. Because of known limitations in alpine terrain, a complex-terrain mask is applied based on the sub-grid variability in elevation determined from a high-resolution digital elevation model. All land ice and large lakes are also masked; retrievals are not produced for coastal regions of Greenland.