A MULTI-TEMPORAL APPROACH FOR DETECTING SNOW COVER AREA USING GEOSTATIONARY IMAGERY DATA

Abstract. In this study, we attempt to detect snow cover area using multi-temporal geostationary satellite imagery based on the difference of spectral and temporal characteristics between snow and clouds. The snow detection method is based on sequential processing of simple thresholds on multi-temporal GOCI data. We initially applied a simple threshold of blue reflectance and then root mean square deviation (RMSD) threshold of near infrared (NIR) reflectance that were calculated from time-series GOCI data. Snow cover detected by the proposed method was compared with the MODIS snow products. The proposed snow detection method provided very similar results with the MODIS cloud products. Although the GOCI data do not have shortwave infrared (SWIR) band, which can spectrally separate snow cover from clouds, the high temporal resolution of the GOCI was effective for analysing the temporal variations between snow and clouds.