This data is a high-resolution soil freeze/thaw (F/T) dataset in the Qinghai Tibet Engineering Corridor (QTEC) produced by fusing sentinel-1 SAR data, AMSR-2 microwave radiometer data, and MODIS LST products. Based on the newly proposed algorithm, this product provides the detection results of soil F/T state with a spatial resolution of 100 m on a monthly scale. Both meteorological stations and soil temperature stations were used for results evaluation. Based on the ground surface temperature data of four meteorological stations provided by the national meteorological network, the overall accuracy of soil F/T detection products achieved 84.63% and 77.09% for ascending and descending orbits, respectively. Based on the in-situ measured 5 cm soil temperature data near Naqu, the average overall accuracy of ascending and descending orbits are 78.58% and 76.66%. This high spatial resolution F/T product makes up traditional coarse resolution soil F/T products and provides the possibility of high-resolution soil F/T monitoring in the QTEC.
ZHOU Xin , LIU Xiuguo , ZHOU Junxiong , ZHANG Zhengjia , CHEN Qihao , XIE Qinghua
Based on long-term series Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) snow cover products, daily snow cover products without data gaps at 500 m spatial resolution over the Tibetan Plateau from 2002 to 2021 were generated by employing a Hidden Markov Random Field (HMRF) modeling technique. This HMRF framework optimally integrates spectral, spatiotemporal, and environmental information together, which not only fills data gaps caused by frequent clouds, but also improves the accuracy of the original MODIS snow cover products. In particular, this technology incorporates solar radiation as an environmental contextual information to improve the accuracy of snow identification in mountainous areas. Validation with in situ observations and snow cover derived from Landsat-8 OLI images revealed that these new snow cover products achieved an accuracy of 98.31% and 92.44%, respectively. Specifically, the accuracy of the new snow products is higher during the snow transition period and in complex terrains with higher elevations as well as sunny slopes. These gap-free snow cover products effectively improve the spatiotemporal continuity and the low accuracy in complex terrains of the original MODIS snow products, and is thus the basis for the study of climate change and hydrological cycling in the TP.
HUANG Yan , XU Jianghui
1. Glacial lake data sets (1960s−2020) This data set contains glacial lake data for the 1960s, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, mapped from Korona KH-4, Sentinel-2, and Sentinel-1 imagery. 2. Potential Outburst Flood Hazard level of Bhutanese glacial lakes This data contains the Potential Outburst Flood Hazard level of Bhutanese glacial lakes with an area greater than 0.05 km2 (n=278). The value for each hazard assessment criteria is also provided in the data attributes.
RINZIN Sonam, ZHANG Guoqing
Surface melting is the primary reason that affects the mass balance of Greenland ice sheet. At the same time, ice and snow have high albedo, and ice sheet surface melting will cause the difference of radiation energy budget, and then affects the energy exchange between sea-land-air. The high-resolution ice sheet surface melting product provides important information support for the study of Greenland ice sheet surface melting and its response to global climate change. This dataset combined microwave radiometer product and optical albedo product, the daily, winter (June-August) averages and July averages of the former are used for layer-stacking, then Gram-Schmidt Spectral Sharpening was adapted to fuse the layer-stacking results with MODIS GLASS albedo product. The spatial resolution of fusion-results has been downscaled from 25 km to 0.05˚. By employing a threshold-based melt detection approach for each fusion-results pixel, Greenland ice sheet surface melt daily product for 1985, 2000, 2015 (DSSMIS) was generated. The spatial resolution of DSSMIS is higher than that of published data sets at home and abroad. Combined with the advantages of radiometer and albedo data, the spatial details characteristics are enhanced and consistent with the extraction range of the original radiometer products, effectively reducing the noise of the radiometer. DSSMIS’s data type is integer, where 1 is melted, 0 is not melted, 255 is masked area besides Greenland ice sheet, and the data set is stored as *.nc.
WEI Siyi,
Snow, ice, and glaciers have the highest albedo of any part of Earth's surface. The increase in melting of the polar ice sheet results in a rapid and sequential decrease in albedo and subsequently influences the global energy balance. The hydrological system derived from surface melt and basal meltwater will affect the dynamic stability of ice sheet and therefore mass balance. The dataset combined microwave radiometer product and optical albedo product, the daily, winter (June-August) averages and July averages of the former are used for layer-stacking, then Gram-Schmidt Spectral Sharpening was adapted to fuse the layer-stacking results with MODIS GLASS albedo product. The spatial resolution of fusion-results has been downscaled from 25 km to 0.05˚. By employing a threshold-based melt detection approach for each fusion-results pixel, Antarctic ice sheet surface melt daily product for 1985-1986, 2000-2001, 2015-2016 (DSSMIS) was generated. The spatial resolution of DSSMIS is higher than that of published data sets at home and abroad. Combined with the advantages of radiometer and albedo data, the spatial details characteristics are enhanced and consistent with the extraction range of the original radiometer products, effectively reducing the noise of the radiometer. It better reflects the melting gradient of mountainous area, groundline area and ice shelf over time, DSSMIS has a higher accuracy. DSSMIS’s data type is integer, where 1 is melted, 0 is not melted, 255 is masked area besides Antarctic ice sheet, and the data set is stored as *.nc.
WEI Siyi,
Based on 11 well-acknowledged global-scale microwave remote sensing-based surface soil moisture products, and with 9 main quality impact factors of microwave-based soil moisture retrieval incorporated, we developed the Remote Sensing-based global Surface Soil Moisture dataset (RSSSM, 2003~2020) through a complicated neural network approach. The spatial resolution of RSSSM is 0.1°, while the temporal resolution is approximately 10 days. The original dataset covered 2003~2018, but now it has been updated to 2020. RSSSM dataset is outstanding in terms of temporal continuity, and has full spatial coverage except for snow, ice and water bodies. The comparison against the global-scale in-situ soil moisture measurements indicates that RSSSM has a higher spatial and temporal accuracy than most of the frequently-used global/regional long-term surface soil moisture datasets. In addition, although RSSSM is remote sensing based, without the incorporation of any precipitation data or records, its interannual variation generally conforms with that of precipitation (e.g., the GPM IMERG precipitation data) and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). Moreover, RSSSM can also reflect the impact of human activities, e.g., urbanization, cropland irrigation and afforestation on soil moisture changes to some degree. The data is in ‘Tiff’ format, and the size after compression is 2.48 GB. The relevant data describing paper has been published in the Journal ‘Earth System Science Data’ in 2021.
CHEN Yongzhe, FENG Xiaoming, FU Bojie
Surface soil moisture (SSM) is a crucial parameter for understanding the hydrological process of our earth surface. Passive microwave (PM) technique has long been the primary choice for estimating SSM at satellite remote sensing scales, while on the other hand, the coarse resolution (usually >~10 km) of PM observations hampers its applications at finer scales. Although quantitative studies have been proposed for downscaling satellite PM-based SSM, very few products have been available to public that meet the qualification of 1-km resolution and daily revisit cycles under all-weather conditions. In this study, therefore, we have developed one such SSM product in China with all these characteristics. The product was generated through downscaling of AMSR-E and AMSR-2 based SSM at 36-km, covering all on-orbit time of the two radiometers during 2003-2019. MODIS optical reflectance data and daily thermal infrared land surface temperature (LST) that have been gap-filled for cloudy conditions were the primary data inputs of the downscaling model, in order to achieve the “all-weather” quality for the SSM downscaling outcome. Daily images from this developed SSM product have achieved quasi-complete coverage over the country during April-September. For other months, the national coverage percentage of the developed product is also greatly improved against the original daily PM observations. We evaluated the product against in situ soil moisture measurements from over 2000 professional meteorological and soil moisture observation stations, and found the accuracy of the product is stable for all weathers from clear sky to cloudy conditions, with station averages of the unbiased RMSE ranging from 0.053 vol to 0.056 vol. Moreover, the evaluation results also show that the developed product distinctly outperforms the widely known SMAP-Sentinel (Active-Passive microwave) combined SSM product at 1-km resolution. This indicates potential important benefits that can be brought by our developed product, on improvement of futural investigations related to hydrological processes, agricultural industry, water resource and environment management.
SONG Peilin, ZHANG Yongqiang
Under the funding of the first project (Development of Multi-scale Observation and Data Products of Key Cryosphere Parameters) of the National Key Research and Development Program of China-"The Observation and Inversion of Key Parameters of Cryosphere and Polar Environmental Changes", the research group of Zhang, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed the snow depth downscaling product in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The snow depth downscaling data set for the Tibetan Plateau is derived from the fusion of snow cover probability dataset and Long-term snow depth dataset in China. The sub-pixel spatio-temporal downscaling algorithm is developed to downscale the original 0.25° snow depth dataset, and the 0.05° daily snow depth product is obtained. By comparing the accuracy evaluation of the snow depth product before and after downscaling, it is found that the root mean square error of the snow depth downscaling product is 0.61 cm less than the original product. The details of the product information of the Downscaling of Snow Depth Dataset for the Tibetan Plateau (2000-2018) are as follows. The projection is longitude and latitude, the spatial resolution is 0.05° (about 5km), and the time is from September 1, 2000 to September 1, 2018. It is a TIF format file. The naming rule is SD_yyyyddd.tif, where yyyy represents year and DDD represents Julian day (001-365). Snow depth (SD), unit: centimeter (cm). The spatial resolution is 0.05°. The time resolution is day by day.
YAN Dajiang, MA Ning, MA Ning, ZHANG Yinsheng
This biophysical permafrost zonation map was produced using a rule-based GIS model that integrated a new permafrost extent, climate conditions, vegetation structure, soil and topographic conditions, as well as a yedoma map. Different from the previous maps, permafrost in this map is classified into five types: climate-driven, climate-driven/ecosystem-modified, climate-driven/ecosystem protected, ecosystem-driven, and ecosystem-protected. Excluding glaciers and lakes, the areas of these five types in the Northern Hemisphere are 3.66×106 km2, 8.06×106 km2, 0.62×106 km2, 5.79×106 km2, and 1.63×106 km2, respectively. 81% of the permafrost regions in the Northern Hemisphere are modified, driven, or protected by ecosystems, indicating the dominant role of ecosystems in permafrost stability in the Northern Hemisphere. Permafrost driven solely by climate occupies 19% of permafrost regions, mainly in High Arctic and high mountains areas, such as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
RAN Youhua, M. Torre Jorgenson, LI Xin, JIN Huijun, Wu Tonghua, Li Ren, CHENG Guodong
Kilometer-level spatially complete (seamless) land surface temperature products have a wide range of applications needs in climate change and other fields. Satellite retrieved LST has high reliability. Integrating the LST retrieved from thermal infrared and microwave remote sensing observation is an effective way to obtain the SLT with certain accuracy and spatial integrity. Based on this guiding ideology, the author developed a framework for retrieving 1km and seamless LST over China landmass, and generated the LST data set accordingly (2002-2020) Firstly, a look-up table based empirical retrieval algorithm is developed for retrieving microwave LST from AMSR-E/AMSR2 observations. Then, AMSR-E/AMSR2 LST is downscaled by using geographic weighted regression to obtain 1km LST. Finally, the multi-scale Kalman filter is used to fuse AMSR-E/AMSR2 LST and MODIS LST to generate a 1km seamless LST data set. The ground valuation results show that the root mean square error (RMSE) of the 1km seamless LST is about 3K. In addition, the spatial distribution of the 1km seamless LST is consistent with MODIS LST and CLDAS LST.
CHENG Jie, DONG Shengyue, SHI Jiancheng
This dataset contains daily 0.05°×0.05° land surface soil moisture products in Qilian Mountain Area in 2019. The dataset was produced by utilizing the optimized wavelet-coupled-RF downscaling model (RF-OWCM) to downscale the “AMSR-E and AMSR2 TB-based SMAP Time-Expanded Daily 0.25°×0.25° Land Surface Soil Moisture Dataset in Qilian Mountain Area (SMsmapTE, V1)”. The auxiliary datasets participating in the downscaling model include GLASS Albedo/LAI/FVC, Thermal and Reanalysis Integrating Medium-resolution Spatial-seamless LST – Tibetan Plateau (TRIMS LST-TP) by Ji Zhou and Lat/Lon information.
CHAI Linna, ZHU Zhongli, LIU Shaomin
Agricultural irrigation consumes a large amount of available freshwater resources and is the most immediate human disturbance to the natural water cycle process, with accelerated regional water cycles accompanied by cooling effects. Therefore, estimating irrigation water use (IWU) is important for exploring the impact of human activities on the natural water cycle, quantifying water resources budget, and optimizing agricultural water management. However, the current irrigation data are mainly based on the survey statistics, which is scattered and lacks uniformity, and cannot meet the demand for estimating the spatial and temporal changes of IWU. The Global Irrigation Water Use Estimation Dataset (2011-2018) is calculated by the satellite soil moisture, precipitation, vegetation index, and meteorological data (such as incoming radiation and temperature) based on the principle of soil water balance. The framework of IWU estimation in this study coupled the remotely sensed evapotranspiration process module and the data-model fusion algorithm based on differential evolution. The IWU estimates provided from this dataset have small bias at different spatial scales (e.g., regional, state/province and national) compared to traditional discrete survey statistics, such as at Chinese provinces for 2015 (bias = −3.10 km^3), at U.S. states for 2013 (bias = −0.42 km^3), and at various FAO countries (bias = −10.84 km^3). Also, the ensemble IWU estimates show lower uncertainty compared to the results derived from individual precipitation and soil moisture satellite products. The dataset is unified using a global geographic latitude and longitude grid, with associated metadata stored in corresponding NetCDF file. The spatial resolution is about 25 km, the time resolution is monthly, and the time span is 2011-2018. This dataset will help to quantitatively assess the spatial and temporal patterns of agricultural irrigation water use during the historical period and support scientific agricultural water management.
ZHANG Kun, LI Xin, ZHENG Donghai, ZHANG Ling, ZHU Gaofeng
The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), the largest high-altitude and low-latitude permafrost zone in the world, has experienced rapid permafrost degradation in recent decades, and one of the most remarkable resulting characteristics is the formation of thermokarst lakes. Such lakes have attracted significant attention because of their ability to regulate carbon cycle, water, and energy fluxes. However, the distribution of thermokarst lakes in this area remains largely unknown, hindering our understanding of the response of permafrost and its carbon feedback to climate change.Based on more than 200 sentinel-2A images and combined with ArcGIS, NDWI and Google Earth Engine platform, this data set extracted the boundary of thermokarst lakes in permafrost regions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau through GEE automatic extraction and manual visual interpretation.In 2018, there were 121,758 thermokarst lakes in the permafrost area of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, covering an area of 0.0004-0.5km², with a total area of 1,730.34km² respectively.The cataloging data set of Thermokarst Lakes provides basic data for water resources evaluation, permafrost degradation evaluation and thermal karst study on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
CHEN Xu, MU Cuicui, JIA Lin, LI Zhilong, FAN Chengyan, MU Mei, PENG Xiaoqing, WU Xiaodong
Long term surface soil moisture (SSM) data with stable and consistent quality are critical for global environment and climate change monitoring. L band radiometers onboard the recently lunched Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Mission can provide the state-of-the-art accuracy SSM, but the short temporal coverage of the data records has limited its applications in long-term studies. While Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) and AMSR2 series provide long term observational records of multi-frequency radiometers (C, X, and K bands). This dataset contains 20 years (2002-2022) global spatio-temporal consistent surface soil moisture. The resolution is 36 km at daily scale, the projection is EASE-Grid2, and the data unit is m3 / m3. This dataset adopts the soil moisture neural network retrieval algorithm developed by Yao et al. (2017). This study transfers the merits of SMAP to AMSR-E/2 through using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) in which SMAP standard SSM products serve as training targets with AMSR-E/2 brightness temperature (TB) as input. Finally, long term soil moisture data are output. This dataset can reproduce the spatial and temporal distribution of SMAP soil moisture, with comparable accuracy as SMAP soil moisture product. This dataset also compares well with in situ SSM observations at 14 dense validation networks globally, with accuracy of 5% volumetric water content, and outperforms AMSR-E/2 standard SSM products from JAXA and LPRM. This global observation-driven dataset spans nearly two decades at present, and is extendable though the ongoing AMSR2 and upcoming AMSR3 missions for long-term studies of climate extremes, trends, and decadal variability.
YAO Panpan, LU Hui
This dataset contains daily 0.05°×0.05° land surface soil moisture products in Qilian Mountain Area in 2018. The dataset was produced by utilizing the multivariate statistical regression model to downscale the “AMSR-E and AMSR2 TB-based SMAP Time-Expanded Daily 0.25°×0.25° Land Surface Soil Moisture Dataset in Qilian Mountain Area (SMsmapTE, V1)”. The auxiliary datasets participating in the multivariate statistical regression include GLASS Albedo/LAI/FVC, 1km all-weather surface temperature data in western China by Ji Zhou and Lat/Lon information.
CHAI Linna, ZHU Zhongli, LIU Shaomin
This dataset contains daily 0.01°×0.01° land surface soil moisture products in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in 2005, 2010, 2015, 2017, and 2018. The dataset was produced by utilizing the multivariate statistical regression model to downscale the “SMAP Time-Expanded 0.25°×0.25° Land Surface Soil Moisture Dataset in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (SMsmapTE, V1)”. The auxiliary datasets participating in the multivariate statistical regression include GLASS Albedo/LAI/FVC, 1km all-weather surface temperature data in western China by Ji Zhou, and Lat/Lon information.
CHAI Linna, ZHU Zhongli, LIU Shaomin
This dataset contains land surface soil moisture products with SMAP time-expanded daily 0.25°×0.25°in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Area. The dataset was produced based on the Random Forest method by utilizing passive microwave brightness temperature along with some auxiliary datasets. The temporal resolution of the product in 1980,1985,1990,1995 and 2000 is monthly, by using SMMR, SSM/I, and SSMIS brightness temperature from 19 GHz V/H and 37 GHz V channels. The temporal resolution of the product between June 20, 2002 and Dec 30, 2018 is daily, by utilizing AMSR-E and AMSR2 brightness temperature from 6.925 GHz V/H, 10.65 GHz V/H, and 36.5 GHz V channels. The auxiliary datasets participating in the Random Forest training include the IGBP land cover type, GTOPO30 DEM, and Lat/Lon information.
CHAI Linna, ZHU Zhongli, LIU Shaomin
High Asia is very sensitive to climate change, and is a hot area of global change research. The changes of temperature and precipitation will be reflected in the freezing and thawing time of ice and snow. Satellite microwave remote sensing can provide continuous monitoring ability of ice and snow surface state in time and space. When a small part of ice and snow begins to melt, micro liquid water will also be reflected in active and passive microwave remote sensing signals. In the microwave band, the dielectric constant of ice and liquid water is very different, so it provides a basic theory for the microwave remote sensing monitoring of ice and snow melting. In the case of passive microwave, when ice and snow begin to melt and liquid water appears, its absorption and emissivity increase rapidly, so its emissivity, brightness temperature and backscatter coefficient will also change rapidly. This data set is the initial time of ice and snow melting in the high Asia region retrieved by using the satellite microwave radiometer and scatterometer observations from 1979 to 2018. The passive microwave remote sensing data are SMMR on satellite (1979-1987) and SSM / i-ssmis radiometer on DMSP (1988 present). The active microwave remote sensing data is the QuikSCAT satellite scatterometer (2000-2009).
Xiong Chuan, SHI Jiancheng, YAO Ruzhen, LEI Yonghui, PAN Jinmei
This dataset contains the glacier outlines in Qilian Mountain Area in 2019. The dataset was produced based on classical band ratio criterion and manual editing. Chinese GF series images collected in 2019 were used as basic data for glacier extraction. Google images and Map World images were employed as reference data for manual adjusting. The dataset was stored in SHP format and attached with the attributions of coordinates, glacier ID and glacier area. Consisting of 1 season, the dataset has a spatial resolution of 2 meters. The accuracy is about 1 pixel (±2 meter). The dataset directly reflects the glacier distribution within the Qilian Mountain in 2018, and can be used for quantitative estimation of glacier mass balance and the quantitative assessment of glacier change’s impact on basin runoff.
Li Jia, Li Jia, LI Jia, LI Jia, WANG Yingzheng, LI Jianjiang, LI Xin, LIU Shaomin
Snow is a significant component of the ecosystem and water resources in high-mountain Asia (HMA). Therefore, accurate, continuous, and long-term snow monitoring is indispensable for the water resources management and economic development. The present study improves the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard Terra and Aqua satellites 8 d (“d” denotes “day”) composite snow cover Collection 6 (C6) products, named MOD10A2.006 (Terra) and MYD10A2.006 (Aqua), for HMA with a multistep approach. The primary purpose of this study was to reduce uncertainty in the Terra–Aqua MODIS snow cover products and generate a combined snow cover product. For reducing underestimation mainly caused by cloud cover, we used seasonal, temporal, and spatial filters. For reducing overestimation caused by MODIS sensors, we combined Terra and Aqua MODIS snow cover products, considering snow only if a pixel represents snow in both the products; otherwise it is classified as no snow, unlike some previous studies which consider snow if any of the Terra or Aqua product identifies snow. Our methodology generates a new product which removes a significant amount of uncertainty in Terra and Aqua MODIS 8 d composite C6 products comprising 46 % overestimation and 3.66 % underestimation, mainly caused by sensor limitations and cloud cover, respectively. The results were validated using Landsat 8 data, both for winter and summer at 20 well-distributed sites in the study area. Our validated adopted methodology improved accuracy by 10 % on average, compared to Landsat data. The final product covers the period from 2002 to 2018, comprising a combination of snow and glaciers created by merging Randolph Glacier Inventory version 6.0 (RGI 6.0) separated as debris-covered and debris-free with the final snow product MOYDGL06*. We have processed approximately 746 images of both Terra and Aqua MODIS snow containing approximately 100 000 satellite individual images. Furthermore, this product can serve as a valuable input dataset for hydrological and glaciological modelling to assess the melt contribution of snow-covered areas. The data, which can be used in various climatological and water-related studies, are available for end users at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.901821 (Muhammad and Thapa, 2019).
SHER Muhammad
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