Snow is a critically important and rapidly changing feature of the Arctic. However, snow-cover and snowpack conditions change through time pose challenges for measuring and prediction of snow. Plausible scenarios of how Arctic snow cover will respond to changing Arctic climate are important for impact assessments and adaptation strategies. Although much progress has been made in understanding and predicting snow-cover changes and their multiple consequences, many uncertainties remain. In this paper, we review advances in snow monitoring and modelling, and the impact of snow changes on ecosystems and society in Arctic regions. Interdisciplinary activities are required to resolve the current limitations on measuring and modelling snow characteristics through the cold season and at different spatial scales to assure human well-being, economic stability, and improve the ability to predict manage and adapt to natural hazards in the Arctic region.

Snow depth on sea ice (SD) is a key geophysical variable, knowledge of which is critical for calculating the energy and mass balance budgets. Moreover, accurate knowledge of the SD distribution is important to retrieve sea‐ice thicknesses from altimetry data. So far, only space‐based microwave radiometers (e.g., Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for Earth Observing System; AMSR‐E) provide operational SD on seasonal sea‐ice retrievals. A thorough assessment of these retrievals is needed on a large scale and on a variety of sea‐ice types. Our study presents such an assessment on Arctic sea ice using NASA's airborne Operation IceBridge (OIB) SDs, retrieved from radar measurements. Between 2009 and 2011, ∼610 12.5 km satellite grid cells were covered by seasonal sea ice where both satellite SD retrievals and OIB data were available. Using all the available data, the difference between the AMSR‐E product and the averaged OIB snow‐radar‐derived SD is 0.00±0.07 m. Satellite‐derived SD was accurate in the Beaufort Sea and the Canadian Archipelago but underestimated (∼0.07 m) in the Nares Strait. The RMSE between the two products ranges between 0.03 and 0.15 m. The RMSE is less than 0.06 m over a shallow snow cover (0.10 m) have been identified and related to the presence of either low ice concentration or significant fraction of multiyear ice within the grid cell that has not been flagged.