Mountain snow: The source of the mother river—Study of multi-scale and multi-physical process of spatio-temporal evolution of snow distribution

Snow is one of the most active elements on the earth, which is an important mass source of polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers, as well as a main supply for the runoff. Its distribution and evolution have a great impact on global hydrological cycle, ecosystem, climate evolution and other natural processes, and play a significant role in hydrological process in alpine mountain area. Melt water from mountain snow and glacier is the main form of water supply at the source of the Yellow River. Therefore, it is urgent to carry out a comprehensive scientific research on snow water resources in the source area of the Yellow River, and further to put forward scientific and reasonable strategies for protecting and developing the Yellow River water resources, based on the accurate assessment of the current status of water resources in the source area of the Yellow River and its variation trends. The research on snow distribution involves challenging and hot scientific frontiers issues like the interaction of atmospheric turbulence and particles, common scientific issues such as multi-field coupling and multi-scale, as well as crosscutting issues between mechanics and geography, atmospheric physics, climate change and other related disciplines. Current research methods for snow distribution include field observation, remote sensing inversion and model research based on dynamic processes. As for the limitations of the first two methods, it has become one of the important methods for snow water resources research to carry out the multi-physical process, multi-scale, multi-field coupling simulation of the spatio-temporal evolution of snow distribution. This paper focuses on introducing the research status and progress of snow distribution, and pointing out the challenges and future research trends.