The col du Lautaret site, located in the heart of the French Alps, is used by the team as a validation target for the “ESA SEOM Sentinel-3 for Science Land Study: Snow S-3-Snow”” project. The site is host to numerous observations of the snowpack and the atmosphere which will be used as part of this contract, in parallel with other CNRS / Météo France funded projects.
To account for the evolution of the snowpack a good repetitiveness of observations is necessary, therefore automated ground measurements are carried out during the winter season. Additionally, Sentinel 2 (L1C) data is being used as a inter-comparison tool, to test methods that will be applied to Sentinel 3 imagery.
Above, a time-series animation from Sentinel-2 images aquired over the winter 2016-2017 (Maxim Lamare).