MODIS Daily Cloud-gap-filled Fractional Snow Cover Dataset of the Asian Water Tower Region (2000-2022)

The Asia Water Tower region, with the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at its core, is the most widespread region of snow cover on Earth, except for the North and South Poles. The topographic heterogeneity of the Asian Water Tower region is so great that the snow cover is thin and patchy, resulting in a highly time-varying snow cover in the region, and therefore daily-scale fractional snow cover data are urgently needed. This dataset is based on the MODIS surface reflectance product MO/YD09GA product, and the MODIS daily cloud-free fractional snow cover dataset for the Asian Water Tower region from 2000 to 2022 was produced using the MESMA-AGE algorithm and the MSTI algorithm. The high spatial resolution Landsat-8 image was taken as the "ground truth", the RMSE was 0.16, and the MAE was 0.10. This dataset has a time series from 26 February 2000 to 31 December 2022 with a spatial resolution of 0.005°, which can provide quantitative snow cover information on the spatial distribution of snow for mountain hydrological models, land surface models, numerical weather forecasts, etc.