Monitoring snow-cover area change in Antarctic coastline region using MODIS product data

• Main Authors: Jing, Chen, Rendong, Li, Ming, Ye, Yang, Lu
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Polar Research Institute of China - PRIC 2009
• Subjects: Cryosphere; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Advances in Polar Science; Antarc*; Polar Science
• Online Access: http://library.arcticportal.org/2375/; http://library.arcticportal.org/2375/1/A0090108.pdf

Based on MODIS snow products, this article studied the changes of snow cover area during 2003—2006 along the coastline of the Antarctic, and 18 typical regions were chosen for further analysis. The result showed that the change of snow cover area was in a fluctuant downward trend as a whole, and more fluctuated obviously in warm season than in cold season. In temporal scale: for the season cycle, the snow cover extent increased rapidly in cold season (Apr-Oct) , while the performance in warm season (Nov-Mar) was not exactly the same during the four years, the snow cover extent decreased in the first and then increased in 2004 and 2006, however, increased firstly and then decreased but reduced as a whole in 2005, for the inter-annual cycle, snow cover extent was the largest in 2003, but reached to the lowest level in 2004, and then increased gradually in 2005 and 2006, whereas, it declined with fluctuant as a whole. In spatial scale, changes mainly centralized along the coastline, moreover, it was more remarkable in the West Antarctic than in the East Antarctic, especially in the Antarctic Peninsula region.