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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ESSDD</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>Earth System Science Data Discussions</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ESSDD</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<publisher><publisher-name></publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/essd-2026-675</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>GMM-SWE v1.0: A GRACE&amp;ndash;Meteorology-Constrained Dataset of Snow Water Equivalent, Snow Depth, and Snow Density over the Northern Hemisphere, 2003&amp;ndash;2022</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mohasseb</surname>
<given-names>Hussein</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yi</surname>
<given-names>Shuang</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2976-2351</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Earth System Numerical Modelling and Application, College of Earth and Planetary Sciences,   University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 101408, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>05</day>
<month>10</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>33</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Hussein Mohasseb</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-675/">This article is available from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-675/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-675/essd-2026-675.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-675/essd-2026-675.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Seasonal snow constitutes one of the largest and most dynamic freshwater reservoirs in the Northern Hemisphere, yet reliable large-scale estimates of Snow Water Equivalent (SWE), snow depth, and snow density remain highly uncertain due to observational limitations and simplified model representations. Here, we present the Gravity&amp;ndash;Meteorology Coupled Model (GMM-SWE), a physics-constrained data assimilation framework designed to reconstruct spatially continuous and physically consistent estimates of SWE, snow depth, and snow density across the Northern Hemisphere (35&amp;deg;&amp;ndash;85&amp;deg; N) for the period 2003&amp;ndash;2022. GMM-SWE integrates satellite gravimetry from GRACE and GRACE-FO with high-resolution meteorological forcing from ERA5-Land within an adaptive Kalman filtering scheme. Snow mass anomalies are isolated from total terrestrial water storage by explicitly subtracting non-snow components derived from an ensemble of land surface and hydrological models. Elevation-dependent melt dynamics and temperature thresholds are incorporated using global topographic information, enhancing realism in complex mountainous terrain. The assimilated snow mass is subsequently refined using a Rauch&amp;ndash;Tung&amp;ndash;Striebel (RTS) smoother, reducing temporal noise and ensuring physically coherent seasonal evolution. A key innovation of GMM-SWE is the dynamic decoupling of snow mass and volume. Snow depth and density are retrieved by coupling the smoothed SWE estimates with a physics-based SNOW-17 compaction scheme, resolved at sub-daily time steps, enabling explicit representation of snowpack densification and metamorphic processes without reliance on static density assumptions. Validation against an extensive network of 13,135 in-situ stations, as well as ERA5-Land, GLDAS, WGHM, and the GlobSnow product, demonstrates consistently strong performance across a wide range of climatic and topographic regimes. The framework shows particular skill in high-latitude continental interiors and substantially improves SWE representation in complex mountain regions where passive microwave retrievals are severely limited. Sensitivity analyses indicate that large-scale SWE patterns and interannual variability are primarily governed by physical mass-balance constraints rather than fine-tuned parameter choices. Overall, GMM-SWE provides a unified, physically informed approach for hemispheric-scale estimation of SWE, snow depth, and snow density, offering a robust dataset for hydrological applications and climate-scale assessments of cryospheric change.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="33"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42550064</award-id>
<award-id>42374103</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality</funding-source>
<award-id>E63W0401</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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