Investigation of changes in snow cover and surface temperature with topographic component of elevation Case study (Urmia Lake catchment)

Snow-covered (SC) surfaces influence the land surface energy balance through albedo feedback, and also have a major impact on climate processes, human activities, and the hydrological cycle. Land surface temperature is one of the main elements in knowing the climate of a region, whose changes and fluctuations in different altitude classes are very useful for hydrological studies. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and investigate the relationship between ground surface temperature and snow cover level with the topographical component of height in Urmia lake basin. In this research, due to the ease of access to remote sensing data and the appropriate temporal and spatial separation of Terra satellite images, monthly, seasonal and annual MODIS sensor images have been used in the period of 1379-1399. The obtained results show that there is an inverse relationship between LST and SC, also the examination of SC maps and elevation classes shows that there is a direct relationship between these two variables, in fact, with the increase in altitude, the stability of snow in the region increases so that at altitudes higher than 3000 m, the amount of snow cover is more than 98% compared to the region. The changes in the temperature of the earth's surface at different altitudes are the reverse of the changes in the snow cover, so at altitudes less than 2000 meters, the annual average temperature is 21-35 Celsius, but at altitudes higher than 3500 meters, the average temperature is about 7-13 Degree.