Comparison study of seasonal snow cover area from space-borne satellite data in the Heilongjiang Basin

Abstract

The Heilongjiang Basin (HLB) located between N43° to N57° and E108° to E141° is a seasonal snow covered region. The monitoring of snow covered areas (SCA) and snow water equivalent (SWE) at regional scale are essential for climate and hydrological applications. Optical and microwave remote sensing have their own advantages and disadvantages for monitoring snow covered areas. In this study, we present the preliminary validation results of snow cover product produced by National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) of USA using satellite data from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E) on board Aqua satellite and optical remote sensing data from Terra/MODIS over the HLB region. The data consist of snow cover and snow water equivalent product for the winters from 2002 to 2008 of coarse resolution and relative fine resolution of MODIS snow cover data for the winter of 2007-08. Our primary result indicates that AMSR-E snow product tends to overestimate snow covered area of the region, and snow cover extent derived from MOD10A2 more objectively reflects the truth. Our result also indicates that elevation is not a significant factor affecting snow covered area distribution in our study region, however, land use/cover do affect the accuracy of the snow cover product, especially in forested distribution areas. In the future, we will have several more test sites in Northeast China, representing the two main types of land-cover categories: forested and agricultural areas for accurately snow cover monitoring.