The NASA Cold Land Processes Pathfinder Mission (CLPP)

The Cold Land Processes Pathfinder (CLPP) mission concept has been developed to measure hydrologic properties of the Cryosphere. The science driver for the mission is to understand the variability of global water cycling and its consequences for local water resources and climate. The CLPP mission is designed to reduce uncertainty of cold-region precipitation, storage, controls, and feedbacks to the land, atmosphere, and ocean, which in turn will improve prediction of future changes in water cycle dynamics. It will provide the first high-resolution global measurements of Earth's changing snow conditions to: 1) quantify the variability of processes in cold regions, 2) improve understanding of past changes, and 3) enable breakthroughs in prediction of future water resources, weather, and climate. The CLPP concept consists of active (C- and Ku-band) and passive (K- and Ka-band) microwave sensors (with high and moderate spatial resolution respectively) to observe snow water equivalent and snow wetness at local process scales. The CLPP global sampling framework provides necessary capability to relate observed local scale snow characteristics to atmospheric forcings, improve predictive models operating at multiple scales, and to tie the short-term CLPP record to the long-term low-resolution remote sensing climate record of global snow properties.