Spectral Reflectance Characteristics of Different Snow and Snow-Covered Land Surface Objects and Mixed Spectrum Fitting

The field spectroradiometer was used to measure spectra of different snow and snow-covered land surface objects in Beijing area.The result showed that for a pure snow spectrum,the snow reflectance peaks appeared from visible to 800 nm band locations;there was an obvious absorption valley of snow spectrum near 1 030 nm wavelength.Compared with fresh snow,the reflection peaks of the old snow and melting snow showed different degrees of decline in the ranges of 300～1 300,1 700～1 800 and 2 200～2 300 nm,the lowest was from the compacted snow and frozen ice.For the vegetation and snow mixed spectral characteristics,it was indicated that the spectral reflectance increased for the snow-covered land types(including pine leaf with snow and pine leaf on snow background), due to the influence of snow background in the range of 350～1 300 nm.However, the spectrum reflectance of mixed pixel remained a vegetation spectral characteristic.In the end,based on the spectrum analysis of snow,vegetation,and mixed snow/vegetation pixels,the mixed spectral fitting equations were established,and the results showed that there was good correlation between spectral curves by simulation fitting and observed ones(correlation coefficient R2=0.950 9).

Using Landsat images to monitor changes in the snow-covered area of selected glaciers in northern Pakistan

Landsat satellite images were used to map and monitor the snow-covered areas of four glaciers with different aspects(Passu: 36.473°N, 74.766°E;Momhil: 36.394°N, 75.085°E; Trivor: 36.249°N,74.968°E; and Kunyang: 36.083°N, 75.288°E) in the upper Indus basin, northern Pakistan, from 1990-2014. The snow-covered areas of the selected glaciers were identified and classified using supervised and rule-based image analysis techniques in three different seasons. Accuracy assessment of the classified images indicated that the supervised classification technique performed slightly better than the rule-based technique. Snow-covered areas on the selected glaciers were generally reduced during the study period but at different rates. Glaciers reached maximum areal snow coverage in winter and premonsoon seasons and minimum areal snow coverage in monsoon seasons, with the lowest snow-covered area occurring in August and September. The snowcovered area on Passu glacier decreased by 24.50%,3.15% and 11.25% in the pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon seasons, respectively. Similarly, the other three glaciers showed notable decreases in snow-covered area during the pre-and post-monsoon seasons; however, no clear changes were observed during monsoon seasons. During pre-monsoon seasons, the eastward-facing glacier lost comparatively more snow-covered area than the westward-facing glacier. The average seasonal glacier surface temperature calculated from the Landsat thermal band showed negative correlations of-0.67,-0.89,-0.75 and-0.77 with the average seasonal snowcovered areas of the Passu, Momhil, Trivor and Kunyang glaciers, respectively, during pre-monsoon seasons. Similarly, the air temperature collected from a nearby meteorological station showed an increasing trend, indicating that the snow-covered area reduction in the region was largely due to climate warming.

Treasure of the Snow-covered Highland

Tibet, known as the“roof of the world”, has long been a destination of pilgrims from around the globe for its unique and mysterious culture. And antiquities and relics excavated from this area, which are testament to the Tibetans’ diligence and intelligence, have been an abundant resource of the famous Tibetan culture. About 50,000 years ago , the ancestors of the Tibetans entered the Stone Age. The pottery shown in picture one, a monkey-faced sculpture excavated in Qu Gong, is the remains of the decorative part of a large piece of earthenware. It illustrates the widespread idea that the

Monitoring recent changes in snow cover in Central Asia using improved MODIS snow-cover products

Snow cover plays an important role in the fields of climatology and cryospheric science. Remotely-sensed data have been proven to be effective in monitoring snow covers. Improved methods to process the 8-day snow-cover products derived from MODIS Terra/Aqua data can dramatically increase the data quality and reduce noise. A five-step algorithm for removing cloud effects was designed to improve the quality of MODIS snow products, and the overall accuracy of the MODIS snow data without cloud（defined as cloud-free snow-cover dataset） was enhanced by more than 90% based on direct and indirect validation methods. The snow-cover frequency（SCF） and snow-cover rate（SCR） of Central Asia were analyzed from 2000 to 2015 using trend analysis and empirical orthogonal functions（EOFs）. Over the plain regions, the SCF displayed a significant north-south declining trend with a rate of 0.03 per degree of latitude, and the SCR showed a similar north-south gradient. In the mountainous areas, the SCF significantly increased with altitude by 0.12 per kilometer. Within the study area, the SCF in 65% of the study area experienced an increasing trend, but only 4.3% of the SCF-increasing pixels passed a significance test. The remaining 35% of the area underwent a decreasing trend of SCF, but only 5.2% of the SCF-decreasing pixels passed a significance test. For the entire Central Asia, the inter-annual variations of snow-cover presented a slight and insignificant increase trend from 2000 to 2015. However, the change trends of snow cover are different between the plain and mountainous regions. That is, the annual mean SCR in the plain areas displayed an increasing trend, but a decreasing trend was found in the mountainous areas.

Characterization and quantification of within-year variation of snow-cover elevation in mountainous regions, eastern Tibet

Fluctuating snow-covered elevation （FSCE） was conceptualized and proposed to characterize within-year variation of the border between snow-covered and snow-free area in mountainous regions. Two parameters, namely median of snow flee period （Tm） and snow free duration （AT）, were defined to quantify FSCE. A regression model of FSCE was developed for the Lhasa River Basin, Niyang River Basin, and Changdu region in eastern Tibet. Statistical analysis of the snow-products data with a spatial resolution of 25km×25km shows that： （1） Tm correlates weakly with geographical and topographic factors, having the yearly mean value of July 31; （2） △T correlates significantly with the average elevation of the snow-products cell, having the yearly mean value of nearly five months （i.e., 151 days）; （3） the region begins snow disappearance in late April and finishes snow coverage in mid November, being snow-free from late June to mid September and snow-covered from December to March in the next year. In addi- tion, snow-products with higher spatial resolution will be helpful to characterize FSCE in smaller spatial scales.

Study on the extremely cold winter of 1670 over the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River

The snow-cover days over the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River （MLRYR） in the winter of 1670 were extracted from Chinese historical documents. By these records, the winter temperature anomalies （compared to the mean of 1961-1990） recorded at seven meteorological stations and the regional mean winter temperature were estimated. The results show that： （1） There was an average of about 30 snow-cover days over the MLRYR region in 1670, ranging from 11-20 days in Shanghai and eastern Zhejiang to 5140 days in eastern Hunan Province. The snow-cover days averaged about 40 days in Anqing and Nan- cheng, and ranged from 30 to 40 days in Quzhou, Jingdezhen, and Nanchang; and （2） the regional mean winter temperature in 1670 was estimated to be approximately 4.0 ℃ lower than that of 1961-1990. The maximum negative anomaly of 5.6℃ occurred in Nanchang and the minimum anomaly of-2.8 ℃ was detected in Quzhou. Both of these were lower than that of the coldest winter during the instrumental observation period of 1951-2010. This research could not only provide a method to es- timate historical climate extremes, but also provide a background to understand the recent instrumentally climate extremes.

Snow-covered pavilions

on Gushan Hill on Hangzhou’s West Lake;fabled as the place where the couple in the Legend of White Snake met for the first time,the Broken Bridge(right]is famous for its snowy scenery and is popular with young lovers.

Accuracy assessment of four cloud-free snow cover products over the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Four up-to-date daily cloud-free snow products–IMS(InteractiveMultisensor Snow products),MOD-SSM/I(combination of the MODIS andSSM/I snow products),MOD-B(Blending method basing on the MODISsnow cover products)and TAI(Terra–Aqua–IMS)–with high-resolutionsover the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau(QTP)were comprehensively assessed.Comparisons of the IMS,MOD-SSM/I,MOD-B and TAI cloud-free snowproducts against meteorological stations observations over 10 snowseasons(2004–2013)over the QTP indicated overall accuracies of 76.0%,89.3%,92.0%and 92.0%,respectively.The Khat values of the IMS,MODSSM/I,MOD-B and TAI products were 0.084,0.463,0.428 and 0.526,respectively.The TAI products appear to have the best cloud-removalability among the four snow products over the QTP.Based on theassessment,an I-TAI(Improvement of Terra–Aqua–IMS)snow productwas proposed,which can improve the accuracy to some extent.However,the algorithms of the MODIS series products show instabilitywhen identifying wet snow and snow under forest cover over the QTP.The snow misclassification is an important limitation of MODIS snowcover products and requires additional improvements.