Snow/ice

one of the most important earth circles

is very significant to climate research and earth environment study.Snow cover

a basic parameter in snow study

can reflect snow amount most directly.The method of detecting snow cover using satellite data automatically is a very interesting topic for snow study.FY-2C

the third geostationary meteorological satellite launched by China in 2004

has 5 channels in its scanning radiometer

including 3.5—4.0μm

water vapor

visible and split infrared channels

which makes snow detection possible.This paper mainly introduces the principle theory and method of snow detection using FY-2C satellite data.Multi-channel thresholds method is a very common way in snow and cloud detection.However

this method has some randomicity in thresholds choosing properly.To avoid the randomicity caused by multi-channel thresholds method

this paper uses threshold functions to take instead of traditional method for snow detection

which uses altitude

geographical location

season

land cover and so on as the variables.Threshold functions can be established by large amount of sampling to obtain coefficients and their expressions.Compared with NOAA-17 snow detection results derived using interactive method

the precision of FY-2C snow detection using this method can reach up to 85 percents.