As the boundary that separates snow-covered areas from snow-free areas,the snowline is the most sensitive indicator for monitoring climatic behavior among all the cryosphere elements.In this paper,the snowline altitude over the Tibetan Plateau(TP)during 2000 to 2011 are extracted using the cloud-removed MODIS fractional snow cover products combining with DEM,and the spatiotemporal changes of snowline altitude are examined.The proposed MODIS-based snowline altitude extracting methodology include the determination of snowline pixel and its altitude,and the establishment of snowline altitude field.The results show that due to the complex terrain,the snowline altitude in the interior of the TP is obviously higher than the peripheral mountainous area.A strong seasonal and interannual variability of snowline altitude is discovered,although there is no obvious trend of snowline altitude change during the examined period. Especially,the east and south of the TP,due to the influence of summer monsoon,there are very large interannual fluctuations of snowline altitude in the summer months.The MODIS-based snowline altitude extracting method was described in this paper,which has a good application potential in SLA monitoring for any other regions.