Hale et al. (2025) What's Next for Snow: Insights From the NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program Community Snow Meeting

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Earth s Future
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-12-01
• Authors: K. Hale, Joachim Meyer, Jack Tarricone, Carrie Vuyovich, Megan Mason, Hans‐Peter Marshall, K. N. Musselman, N. P. Molotch, Rashmi Shah, Shadi Oveisgharan
• DOI: 10.1029/2025ef006460

Research Groups

• NASA's Terrestrial Hydrology Program (THP)
• Environment and Climate Change Canada (mentioned for Terrestrial Snow Mass Mission)
• The broader international snow science community (represented by 200 meeting attendees)

Short Summary

This paper summarizes the outcomes of a Community Snow Meeting sponsored by NASA THP, outlining the current state of snowpack monitoring techniques, identifying critical knowledge gaps, and recommending next steps for global-scale snow research and development.

Objective

• To outline existing and ongoing snowpack monitoring techniques.
• To identify knowledge gaps and recommended next steps for the snow community.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global (aim for snow monitoring); Meeting held in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
• Temporal Scale: Summarizes research from the last decade; Aims to guide the next decade of snow research and development.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: N/A (The paper synthesizes discussions on various operational snow models used in the broader community, but does not employ a specific model for its own analysis).
• Data sources: Insights and discussions gathered from a Community Snow Meeting with 200 in-person and virtual attendees. The paper also references existing literature and ongoing efforts in snow measurement instruments, remote sensing field campaigns, and satellite mission proposals.

Main Results

• A broad summary of the state of numerous snow science sub-disciplines was compiled.
• Key insights and takeaways from the Community Snow Meeting were identified and shared.
• Shortcomings in existing snowpack observation systems were highlighted, including product performance uncertainty, mission proposal advancement challenges, and lack of synergy across methods.
• Recommended next actionable steps for improved and global-scale snow monitoring for climate and human purposes were outlined.

Contributions

• Provides a comprehensive synthesis of the current state of snow science and operational snow monitoring.
• Identifies critical knowledge gaps and challenges within the snow community.
• Proposes a roadmap and recommended next steps for future snow research and development, particularly highlighting NASA opportunities.
• Serves as a community-driven synthesis to support ongoing and future pathways for global snow monitoring.

Funding

• NASA's Terrestrial Hydrology Program (THP)

Citation

@article{Hale2025Whats,
  author = {Hale, K. and Meyer, Joachim and Tarricone, Jack and Vuyovich, Carrie and Mason, Megan and Marshall, Hans‐Peter and Musselman, K. N. and Molotch, N. P. and Shah, Rashmi and Oveisgharan, Shadi},
  title = {What's Next for Snow: Insights From the NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program Community Snow Meeting},
  journal = {Earth s Future},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1029/2025ef006460},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025ef006460}
}