Abstract:The main sources of remote sensing data and data processing methods of snow information retrieval are introduced. For the optical remote sensing, the AVHRR and MODIS data were widely used to distinguish the snow cover from other l and cover types mostly according to the high reflectance of snow in the visible band and low in the near infrared band; and the snow cover area and depth also c an be obtained by regression equations. With advanced sensors, the data from MOD IS is obviously superior to that from AVHRR in algorithms and resolution to deri ve the snow information. For the microwave remote sensing: passive microwave rem ote sensing has all weather and day night data acquisition capability, the ear th surface information can be obtained in whole day. So it is more useful to detec t the snow depth than optical remote sensing. The snow cover was detected throug h retrieving the brightness temperature of snow. Active microwave remote sensing can estimate snow cover by different backscattering coefficient. Finally, the m ain problem and development trends of snow information retrieval technique by us ing satellite remote sensing data are discussed.