Add Snow Classification data set (Sturm & Liston, 2021)

[micahjohnson150]

NSIDC data set: https://nsidc.org/data/NSIDC-0768/versions/1 (link)

This data set consists of global, seasonal snow classifications determined from air temperature,
precipitation, and wind speed climatologies. The classifications represent a climatological average
for the 39 year period from 1981–2019.

Specifically for the snowexsql database, I recommend adding the North American downscaled rasters (tiffs, netCDF, and/or ascii) files at 300m, 1km, 5km, and 50km (see the NSIDC User's Guide for detail). The snow classifications (tundra, prairie, montane forest, ephemeral, etc.) will help users filter data from multiple SnowEx campaigns where the objectives were to study snow in different snow climate types.

The associated paper citation for this data set is Sturm, M., & Liston, G. E. (2021). Revisiting the global seasonal snow classification: An updated dataset for earth system applications. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 22(11), 2917-2938.

Migrated from snowexsql #69

[meganmason]

cool! Thanks for migrating the issue to the proper spot.

[micahjohnson150]

@meganmason I added a script and opened pr #12 for adding the snow classification to the db. Take a look at the script and specifically look at the kwargs which is ultimately the metadata in the db. Let me know if you want any changes.