The snow cover map shows the fraction of an area covered by snow on a monthly basis. Measurements were made by the MODIS sensor on NASA’s Terra satellite. Gray indicates land areas with no snow, darkest blue represents minimal snow cover, and solid white indicates 100 percent snow cover. Because MODIS relies on visible light to assess snow cover, the sensor cannot collect data over the highest latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere during winter when no sunlight reaches the polar region.
On these maps, vegetation is pictured as a scale, or index, of greenness. Greenness is based on several factors: the number and type of plants, how leafy they are, and how healthy they are. In places where foliage is dense and plants are growing quickly, the index is high, represented in dark green. Regions where few plants grow have a low vegetation index, shown in tan. The index is based on measurements taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Areas where the satellite did not collect data are gray.
View, download, or analyze more of these data from NASA Earth Observations (NEO):
Snow Cover
Vegetation
