PRELIMINARY RESEARCH ON MONITORING SNOW-COVER OVER CHINA WITH AMSU DATA

The territory of China was divided into five areas, and a primary method for each area was proposed to monitoring snow-cover over China, using the data from channel 1, 2, 15 of NOAA-16 AMSU.With these methods, weekly compositive snow-cover maps of China were achieved during the period of October 1, 2001 to April 1, 2002.The comparison of the ground snow-depth record from the meteorological stations all around the country with snowcover maps mapped by NOAA Interactive Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS), and from SSM/I (Special Sensor Microw ave Imager) data w ere used to examine the reliability of the snow-cover maps form AMSU in detail.Analysis result shows that the discrimination of AMSU snow-cover maps is good, and the correctness of AMSU snow-cover maps is close or even superior to those of IMS and SSM/I, especially during the medium-term of the snow season.