Abstract
The Karoon River Basin, with an area of about 67,000 km2, is located in the southern part of Iran and has a complex mountainous terrain. No comprehensive study has been done on the spatial and temporal variations of snow cover in this region to date. In this paper, daily snow data of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer MODIS Terra (MOD10A1) and MODIS Aqua (MYD10A1) were examined from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2015, to analyze snow cover variations. Due to difficulties created by cloud cover effects, it was crucial to reduce cloud contamination in the daily time series. Therefore, two common cloud removal methods were applied on the daily data. The results suggested that in winter nearly 43% of the Basin’s area experienced a negative trend, while only 1.4% of the Basin had a positive trend for snow-covered days (SCD); trends in fall and spring were less evident in the data. Using a digital elevation model of the Basin, the trends of SCD in 100 m elevation intervals were calculated, indicating a significant positive trend in SCD during the fall season above 3500 m.
Highlights
The impact of snow cover on climate is intricate because of its feedback with the air temperature [1,2]and is a major facet in the study of global climate change [3]
Based on our newly developed data set (MOYD), we studied the seasonal trends in the snow-covered days (SCD) and snow-covered areas (SCA) over the Karoon River Basin
Land surface temperature data (MOD11A1) were obtained to explore land surface temperature (LST) relation with SCD. Both positive and negative trends for SCD could be seen on seasonal scales
Summary
The impact of snow cover on climate is intricate because of its feedback with the air temperature [1,2]and is a major facet in the study of global climate change [3]. Snow cover data were only available from ground observation data. Because of the high spatial and temporal variability in mountainous areas, collecting snow observations and modeling the snowpack in such regions can be extremely challenging [5,6,7]. As a result of their free availability, appropriate resolution, and high accuracy, MODIS snow cover products have been used as the main remote sensors for spatial and temporal snow cover studies [8]. Many research projects were carried out using MODIS snow cover products. Tang et al [9] used the MOD10A1 product to examine the temporal and spatial variations of snow cover across the Tibetan Plateau from 2001 to 2011
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