Monitoring of snow cover in the Tarim River Basin using MODIS and SSMI/R snow data

Snow plays an important role in the Earth's climate system. Obviously, air temperature rising results in changing of distribution of seasonal snow cover and regime of snowmelt runoff.The main source streams converging into the Tarim river rise in the mountainous regions and surface runoff volume and groudwater reserves are closely related to the accumulation and melt of seasonal snowcover in the monutainous regions. Based on the remote sensing snow data, the distribution characteristic of snow in Tarim River basin is analized. The elevation effect of snow cover in the basin is significant. The snow extent and volume increase as the elevation and most of snow distribute in the elevation zone above 2000m. Snow cover reach its maximum in Janary but snow depth reach its maximum in February. In the recently 30 years, snow is increasing, but not all the month are in this trend. Snow is increasing in the accumulation period but decrease in the ablation period, which is due to the climate change of warmer and wetter shift in the basin.