An Overview of Wintertime Snow Cover Characteristics over China and the Impact of Eurasian Snow Cover on Chinese Climate

The progress on researches concerning wintertime snow cover over China is reviewed in the first part of the article. This part includes the spatial climatological distribution of snow cover and its seasonal, interannual and decadal variability, features of wintertime snowfall, effects of meteorological factors on the snow mass balance, and roles played by external forcing and atmospheric circulation system in the formation of snow cover China. Then, researches on simultaneous and lagged impacts of wintertime and springtime Eurasian snow cover upon climate over China are summarized. It illustrates climate anomalies over China are in association with Eurasian snow cover anomalies, as well as related physical mechanisms. The Eurasian snow cover anomalies can alter the soil moisture, surface air temperature and net radiation, which trigger abnormal mid-latitude atmospheric circulations over the Eurasian continent and thus affect the climate over China. By applying hindcast results of the climate forecast system version 2 (CFSv2) of National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), the predictability of Eurasian snow cover and its relations with climate over China is analyzed. It demonstrates that hindcasts of CFSv2 can well reproduce the springtime interannual and decadal variability of Eurasian snow cover and associated summer rainfall anomalies in China. Although many meaningful results have been obtained on the linkage of Eurasian snow cover with the climate variability over China, some questions still remain unsolved. In the end, some issues concerning the snow cover and its climate effect are listed, which need further investigation.