CHANGES IN SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF SNOW DEPOSIT DURING 2001…2022 IN EAST KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

In recent years, regional satellite products that provide high spatial and temporal resolution for describing snow cover parameters have become publicly available. These products offer the most accurate estimates for steppe areas, where interference from forest cover is minimal. Regular data grids provide new opportunities to analyze the spatial characteristics of snow coverage in territories that previously could not be obtained from meteorological station data. This study investigates the long-term changes in the large-scale spatial distribution of water reserves in the snow cover in the Abai and East Kazakhstan regions. These characteristics of the snow cover can also experience transformations, which are driven by climate change. The Abai and East Kazakhstan regions of Kazakhstan, with a total area of about 0.27 million km2, are located in the center of the Eurasian continent. This paper describes the transformation of the large-scale spatial distribution of the snow cover on the analyzed territory from 2001 to 2022. The Snow Water Equivalent Anomaly (SWEA) product on March 1 was used as the initial data, which has a daily update and a resolution of 1 km and is available on the USGS FEWS NET portal. It was found that the large-scale spatial distribution of positive anomalies of the water equivalent of the snow cover on the analyzed territory varied between 2001…2022, with an increase in situations characterized by a decrease in the typical size of zones with positive anomalies of water reserves in the snow. This effect is partly synchronized with similar phenomena described for large mountainous countries of Eurasia, where the average area of clusters forming an area with a positive anomaly of water reserves in snow decreased tenfold from 2001 to 2019, from approximately 10,000 km2 to 1,000 km2.