This book visually presents the snow cover change in the global mountain regions over the last two decades and the spatial distribution and temporal variations of main snow cover elements  in the Tibetan Plateau(TP) over the last three decades in the form of maps to reveal the basic characteristics of snow cover and their dynamic process in the global mountain regions. The maps showing temperature and precipitation variations in the TP for the same period of time are also provided in the book to enable readers understand climate change in the TP. It fills the gaps of addressing the snow cover change in the global mountain region, and makes an original contribution to understanding snow cover and climate change in the global high mountain region.

Snow cover is an important component of the cryosphere, and the study on spatial and temporal variations of snow cover is essential for understanding the consequences and impacts of climate change and water resources management. The losses of snow cover may have far-reaching consequences, affecting water supplies, ecosystems, human livelihoods, and even global weather systems.

Dr. Duo Chu was born in Panam, Shigatse, Tibet, China, in 1969. He received the B.S. degree in atmospheric science from the Nanjing Institute of Meteorology, Nanjing, in 1990, and the Ph.D. degree in physical geography from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS), Beijing, in 2003. He worked at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) from 2007 to 2008 in Kathmandu, Nepal, as project coordinator, and was the senior visiting scholar in the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2017 in the USA. Currently, he is chief scientist and vice director of Tibet Institute of Plateau Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences.

Dr. Chu’s research focuses on remote sensing of snow cover, land cover and land surface parameters in the high mountain region in China. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed journal articles, one English book (Remote Sensing of Land Use and Land Cover Change in Mountain Region, Springer Nature 2020), and five Chinese books.