Abstract
The seasonal snow cover of the Tibetan Plateau exerts a profound environmental influence both regionally and globally. Daily observations of snow depth at 37 meteorological stations in Tibet and MODIS eight-day snow products (MOD10A2) during the period 2001–2015 are analyzed with respect to the frequency and spatial distribution of snow cover for each season and for various altitude ranges. The results show that the average snow cover percentage was 16%. Snow cover frequency was less than 21% for 70% of the Tibetan area, while it was more than 40% in eastern Tibet and in the Himalayas. We also estimated the variations in the starting times of snow accumulation and ablation. During the 15 years, both datasets revealed a significant trend of earlier onset of ablation, but no evident trend for the start of accumulation. The two datasets differed slightly with respect to the seasonal variation of snow cover. MODIS data showed more snow in winter than in other seasons, but the ground data showed most snow in early spring. For the station locations, the correlation between ground and MODIS snow cover percentage (number of snow-covered stations/number of cloud-free stations) is 0.77. Combining the advantages of remote sensing data and ground observation data is the best way to investigate snow in Tibet.
Highlights
Seasonal snow cover accounts for 30% of the Earth’s land surface [1] and plays an important role in global climate, hydrology and ecosystems through the snow-albedo feedback effect and the snow-hydrological effects
If we let SP be the number of periods with snow cover at a given pixel, the snow cover frequency for that pixel is
Let cloud periods (CP) be the number of periods with persistent cloud cover at a given pixel (‘persistent’ means that the pixel is cloud covered for the entire eight-day period)
Summary
Seasonal snow cover accounts for 30% of the Earth’s land surface [1] and plays an important role in global climate, hydrology and ecosystems through the snow-albedo feedback effect and the snow-hydrological effects. Some research was based on Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data [28,29,30,31,32,33,34] These studies described the characteristics of snow cover over TP and its relationship with atmospheric circulation and water cycle systems and responses to climate change. The combined use of data from meteorological stations and remote sensing is a feasible way to investigate the distribution and variation in snow cover in Tibet. We use the daily observations of snow depth at 37 meteorological stations in Tibet and the MODIS eight-day snow products (MOD10A2) with 500-m resolution to investigate the snow cover in Tibet during the period 2001–2015. The trends described in this paper do not represent long-term trends since the study period is only 15 years
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