NASA-Funded Research Looking at EL Nino Events to Forecast Western U.S. Snowfall

A NASA-funded study uses a computer model to understand an observed link between winter and spring snowfall in the Western U.S. and El Niño Southern Oscillation. Almost 75 to 85 percent of water resources in the Western U.S comes from snow that accumulates in the winter and early spring and melts as runoff in spring and summer. Understanding this connection and using it to predict future snowfall rates would greatly help both citizens and policy makers.

One of the missions of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise (ESE), which funded this research, is to better understand how the Earth system is changing.

The NASA-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data for improved model predictions was used in this study. NDVI measures the amount of solar energy reflected and absorbed by vegetation. The NDVI was created by using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geostationary Environmental Orbiting Satellite (GOES) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instrument. The data used in this research also comes from the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite.

For the complete article on the Snowfall study, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/news-release/releases/2003/03-24.htm