Artificial snow accumulation detected from space

3D In English snow-ice

Simon Gascoin, 3 avril 2023

People often ask if we can detect artificial snow in satellite images. It’s not so easy except when the surrounding slopes are totally snow-free…

But recently, I noticed some anomalous snow accumulations patterns in a satellite-derived map of the snow depth near Super Barèges ski resort (Pyrenees). This map was computed at 2 m resolution from a pair of Pléiades stereo images acquired on 16-Mar-2021 (to know more about the method see Marti et al. 2016; Deschamps-Berger et al. 2020).

Pléiades multispectral image and snow depth 16 Mar 2021 © CNES Distribution Airbus DS

The little snow mounds are precisely located on the Toue ski slope. This slope is equipped with snow lances hence we see here artificial snow accumulation. To my knowledge this is the first time that artificial snow depth is spotted from space.

That year the ski resorts were closed because of the Covid-19… But the managers had the snow cannons running anyway as the decision was made quite late by the government. The accumulated snow remained there the whole winter as snow groomers were not used to spread it on the slopes..

La Plagne-Montalbert (French Alps) on 3 Jan 2021 (photo by César Deschamps-Berger)

PS. There is another way to spot artificial snow even if your eyes can’t see it..

 

Plus d'actualités

Evolution de l’altitude de la ligne de neige au cours des 41 dernières années dans le bassin versant du Vénéon (Oisans)

Pour contribuer à caractériser les conditions hydrométéorologiques lors de la crue torrentielle qui a frappé la Bérarde en juin, j’ai analysé une nouvelle série de cartes d’enneigement qui couvre la période 1984-2024 [1]. Grâce à la profondeur temporelle de cette série, on constate que l’altitude de la ligne de neige dans le bassin versant du […]

Biophysical parameter retrieval from Sentinel-2 images using physics-driven deep learning for PROSAIL inversion

The results presented here are based on published work: Y. Zérah, S. Valero, and J. Inglada. « Physics-constrained deep learning for biophysical parameter retrieval from sentinel-2 images: Inversion of the prosail model« , in Remote Sensing of Environment, doi: 10.1016/j.rse.2024.114309. This work is part of the PhD of Yoël Zérah, supervised by Jordi Inglada and Silvia Valero. […]

Is Antarctica greening?

In a recent study, Roland and Bartlett et al. (2024) showed that the Antarctic Peninsula is « greening », i.e. the area covered by vegetation is growing. This article published in Nature Geoscience was featured in many media outlets. The authors drew this conclusion from the analysis of 35 years of Landsat images. More specifically, they computed […]

Rechercher