But to the eye of a weather satellite 500 miles above the Earth, it's quite a challenge. Scientists at the Commerce Department 's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have developed a new method to distinguish snow and ice from clouds and fog in satellite imagery. We've been testing the new channel since March 10. Fennimore, George Stephens, and their colleagues have developed an image-processing technique that uses the new 1.6 micron channel, the 0.63 micron visible channel, and the 11.0 micron thermal channel to differentiate snow and ice from clouds and fog. The process renders the snow and ice white and most other surface features in natural colors.
All scenes contain snow.
The image of Western Canada shows mountains, forest, and tundra. The imagery will be used to generate snowcover maps for the National Weather Service's forecasting applications. The imagery will also be used to create special images covering significant snow and ice events. These images will be similar to the example images presented here.