Retrieval of snow cover underlying cloud by multi-temporal remote sensing

Snow is a main factor affecting the global atmosphere and surface interaction, and it´s also an essential source of global freshwater resources. It´s difficult to discriminate cloud from snow, because the spectral characteristics of cloud and snow in remote sensing image in visible bands are similar. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) reflection data and its MOD35_L2 cloud mask data in Jilin Province on Nov. 23, Nov. 24 and Nov. 25 in 2008 are selected, and the cloud on Nov. 24 is removed, then the snow cover is retrieved from cloud reduced data by the Normalized Difference Snow Index(NDSI) snow cover algorithm. Finally, microwave Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS Aqua (AMSR-E) snow water equivalent data is used to validate the retrieval results. The results suggest that snow cover fraction of cloud reduced data is closer to the AMSR-E snow cover fraction. This method can resume the snow cover underlying cloud exactly.