EVALUATION OF SNOW-COVER MAPS OVER NORTHEASTERN ASIA DERIVED FROM AVHRR, MODIS and MTSAT DATA

We investigated utilization of Japanese geostationary meteorological satellite, Multi-functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT) data which is able to provide hourly image to a terrestrial monitoring. Firstly, SZA angular effect in reflectance channel was corrected, then algorithms for daily composite were compared. Hourly measurement of MTSAT increased the chance of observing cloud-free land surface compared with those of the VIS-IR instruments on polar-orbiting satellites such as AVHRR, MODIS. Finally, snow-cover maps were created with MTSAT, AVHRR and MODIS data by computing NDSI. And it was found that snow-cover map derived from MASAT was consistent with that of AVHRR or MODIS. Therefore, we confirmed that availability of MTSAT data inferior in spatial and spectral resolution compared to another polar orbiting satellite such as AVHRR or MODIS for terrestrial monitoring, because MTASAT is able to monitor snow cover with less cloud contaminations.