Abstract: Based on the daily snow cover depth, temperature and precipitation at 52 weather stations from 1962 to 2008, the characteristics of snow cover variation were analyzed using methods of a statistics and a wavelet analysis. The results indicated that the increasing trend of annual snow cover days is not significant and it only increases 3 d from 1962 to 2008. The increasing trend of annual maximum snow cover depth is also not significant with 0.2 cm/decade, so is that of annual cumulative snow cover depth with 8.9 cm/decade. The number of snow cover days, annual maximum snow cover depth and annual cumulative snow cover depth are all relatively small before 1980s in terms of their inter-decadal variations, while they all increase after 1980s.

Key words: Number of snow cover day, Annual maximum snow cover depth, Annual accumulative snow cover depth, Liaoning province