Spatial-Temporal Variation Characteristics of Snow Cover Days in Northeast China in the Past 40 Years and Their Relationship with Climatic Factors

The snow cover days were extracted out of the snow data on depth distribution from 1979 to 2016 in China, combined with temperature, precipitation, humidity, sunlight and wind speed and other meteorological data, by taking advantage of traditional statistical methods and GIS spatial analysis methods, to study the temporal and spatial variation characteristics of snow cover days in northeast China region in the past 40 years, and to analyze their relationship with climatic factors. It turned out that the average annual snow cover days were 93 d in northeast China region, having an increasing trend, the rate was 0.6 d/10a, and the maximum average annual snow cover days appeared in 2013. Snow cover days in spring dominate the changes of the average snow days all year around. The snow cover days in northeast China region were affected by latitude, geography and land-sea thermal difference, which gradually decreased from north to south, and the maximum value appeared in the Da Hinggan area. Precipitation, humidity and snow cover days are positive correlation, and temperature, wind speed and sunlight are negative correlation. The correlation between climatic elements and snow cover days is as follows: temperature>humidity>wind speed>sunlight>precipitation. The influence of climatic elements on the seasonally frozen ground region is more significant than that in the permafrost region. The results show that temperature is the main factor that affects the average annual snow cover days in northeast China region.