Introduction and Question: "Can You Distinguish Between Clouds and Snow on the Ground?" (Page 1 of 6)
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Identifying clouds over ground snow cover is a difficult and important problem for the tactical meteorologist. The problem is that both clouds and snow cover are quite reflective at visible wavelengths. Thus, users often cannot tell them apart.
This figure shows a longwave IR Meteosat-5 image over Iran. Can you tell what is cloud and what is snow on the mountains? It's not easy, because at longwave IR wavelengths, clouds and snow cover tend to blend in with each other on images, especially if both have similar temperatures.