Abstract
As a crucial component of the climate system, snow cover plays an important role on surface energy budgets, hydrological cycles and socioeconomic development. This paper investigated the spatiotemporal patterns of snow depth across the Qinghai Plateau (QP) during 1980–2018 based on passive microwave (PMW) satellite observation and reanalysis products. The study identified the relationships between the changes in PMW snow depth and topographic features and revealed the impact of climatic variables (air temperature, precipitation and wind speed) and large‐scale atmospheric circulations on observed snow depth variability. The results show that the spatial pattern of snow depth climatology is similar in all datasets, except in terms of magnitude, with high values in the southern and southeastern parts of the QP and low values in the eastern and northwestern parts. Average snow depth correlates positively with precipitation, elevation and slope, and negatively with air temperature and wind speed. The long‐term trends in snow depth vary with the season and the datasets. The PMW snow depth across the QP shows a significant annual (−0.125 cm·decades −1 , p −1 , p