Climate Change: A New Software to Study the Variations of Snow Images Shot by Web Cam

The seasonal Snow cover and its extension play a relevant role for environmental studies in mountain areas especially considering its variation during time; the estimation of snow cover areal distribution is also particularly interesting to study evolution of climate and atmospheric dynamics. Recently, webcam images collected at daily or even hourly intervals are used as tools to observe the snow covered areas for touristic purposes; nevertheless those images, properly processed, can represent a very important environmental data source. This paper presents the Snow-noSnow software specifically designed to automatically detect the extension of snow cover from webcam images. The software was tested on images collected on Alps (ARPAV webcam network) and on Apennines in a pilot station properly equipped for this project by CNR-IIA.