To better study the inter-annual change characteristics of snow cover in northern Xinjiang, snow cover days, annual maximum snow depth, annual snow depth, snow frequency, snow weather and meteorological elements of 20 hydrological years in northern Xinjiang were analyzed based on the snow cover data set from 2000 to 2020, and the influencing factors were also investigated. The results showed that both numbers of snow day in northern Xinjiang in recent 20 years and numbers of snowfall at more than 58% of meteorological stations decreased significantly, which was closely related to the significant increase of minimum temperature and precipitation. 72% of the sites showed a trend of increasing temperature and the precipitation in northern Xinjiang increased significantly in the past 20 years. In terms of snow phenology, continuous days of snow showed a weak downward trend and the appearance time of the first snow day was significantly delayed, with an increase of 0.17 days annually, and the delay of the last snow day was not significant. Geographic and meteorological factors were closely related to snow cover, especially changes of temperature and precipitation would lead to significant change in snow depth, and influence of altitude on snow phenology was more obvious than those of the meteorological factors.

northern Xinjiang  /  snow cover  /  ground observation  /  temporal and spatial changes  /  structural equation model