Coordinator

Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) (www.fmi.fi) Finnish Meteorological Institute is a research institute under the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Finland. It provides operational and research information related to weather and climate for the needs of the public and decision-makers, including the production of numerical weather predictions.

FMI is the coordinator of the GlobSnow-2 project. In addition to the general coordination, FMI is also responsible for coordinating the efforts of the snow water equivalent (SWE) product development and production.

Partners

ENVEO IT GmbH (www.enveo.at) ENVEO IT GmbH, founded in 2001, is an engineering company based in Innsbruck. Austria. It is specialised in remote sensing techniques and applications for hydrology and meteorology, including basic research, transfer from research to applications, and services in hydrology and water management.

Environment Canada (EC) (www.ec.gc.ca) The Climate Processes Section of Environment Canada conducts research that contributes to a better understanding of climate system behaviour in Canada, with a focus on cold climate processes and their representation in climate models. A long-standing research program is the development of satellite-based capabilities to characterize the spatial and temporal aspects of the cryosphere in northern Canada, with a focus on snow cover (snow water equivalent), sea ice and lake ice.

Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) (www.ymparisto.fi) The Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) with a staff of about 600 is a national research and development centre under the Ministry of the Environment, Finland. The institute provides environmental information, publishes assessments on the state of the environment, conducts research on the environment and environmental effects of activities and analyses approaches and methods for the prevention and mitigation of harmful effects.

GAMMA Remote Sensing AG (www.gamma-rs.ch) GAMMA Remote Sensing AG is a Swiss corporation located in Gümligen near Bern, Switzerland founded in 1995. The overall objective of GAMMA is to conduct research studies and to provide consulting and processing services in the field of microwave remote sensing. The topics include signal processing, microwave signature interpretation, retrieval algorithm development, and modeling activities.

Norsk Regnesentral (NR) (www.nr.no) Norsk Regnesentral (Norwegian Computing Center, NR) is a private, independent, non-profit foundation established in 1952. NR carries out contract research and development projects in the areas of information and communication technology, applied statistical modelling and earth observation. NR has been a leading research and development institute in satellite remote sensing since Norway started to focus on this discipline in the beginning of the 1980s.

University of Bern (http://www.geography.unibe.ch) The Remote Sensing Research Group at the Department of Geography, University of Bern has a long tradition in the retrieval and analysis of various land surface (e.g. lake surface water temperature, NDVI, albedo, snow extent) and atmospheric parameters (aerosol optical depth, cloud) from satellite data. Within the Globsnow-2 project, the Remote Sensing Research Group leads the workpackage 2.2, which aims at investigating the compilation of a long time series of snow extent based on GlobSnow SE, AVHRR SE and CryoClim SE.

ZAMG (www.zamg.ac.at) Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik is a research institution under the Federal Ministry of Science and Research of Austria. It is structured into four major fields of activity, weather forecast, climatology, environmental meteorology and geody- namics. In GlobSnow-2 ZAMG contributes to the validation of satellite products using ground truth observations of snow depth as well as modelled gridded data of snow water equivalent and snow depth for the Alpine region. Besides validation, ZAMG will also test the capability of a snow data assimilation routine.

MeteoSwiss (www.meteoswiss.ch) MeteoSwiss is the national weather and climate service in Switzerland. The Swiss GCOS Office, in the International Affairs Division, coordinates the National Climate Observing System (GCOS Switzerland). Within GlobSnow-2, MeteoSwiss will focus on compiling user requirements in a white paper based on user consultation meetings, to optimize the value of GlobSnow-2 products for the user community. Within GCOS Switzerland a "National Basic Climatological Network for Snow (NBCN-S)" was defined and will be used for the in-situ validation of GlobSnow-2 products.

Norut (www.norut.no) Norut is a Norwegian applied research institute located in Tromsø, Norway. Norut has long time experience in the field of remote sensing of the cryosphere, and is particularly specializing on the use of SAR for retrieval of snow parameters including snow extent and snow water equivalent. In Globsnow-2 Norut contributes to validation and intercomparison of the snow extent product and improvements of the snow extent product us- ing SAR.