Remotely Sensed Albedo

• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Basel, Switzerland MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2021
• Subjects: Environmental economics; Research & information: general; albedo; Arctic; AVHRR; bare soil albedo; bi-hemispherical reflectance; BRDF; BRDF/Albedo; CGLS; climate; climate change; consumer-grade camera; contiguous United States; directional correction; directional hemispherical reflectance; DMSP; empirical modeling; EnKF; forest cover; forest management; forest structure; GC-NET; high spatio-temporal resolution; HLS; land surface albedo; land use; Landsat; Landsat albedo; landscape; linear endmember; LTDR; MISR; MODIS; MODIS albedo; n/a; NDSI Snow Cover; OzFlux; PROMICE; radiometric calibration; remote sensing; sea ice; semivariogram; Sentinel 2; snow; soil line; soil moisture; spatial representativeness; spectral unmixing; surface albedo; SURFRAD; time series; tower albedometer; Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV); Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; upscaling; urbanization; validation; vegetation indices; vegetation variation; VIIRS; VJB
• Online Access: Open Access: DOAB: description of the publication; Open Access: DOAB, download the publication

 Albedo is a known and documented phenomenon, defined as the reflectivity of a surface, i.e., the ratio of reflected light energy to incident light energy. It is a dimensionless quantity, used in particular in agro-forestry, urban environment, cryosphere and geology. It is an Essential Climate Variable (ECV), deemed extremely meaningful to compute the earth heat balance. The albedo of natural surfaces varies largely, especially in the visible, with the lowest values found for water bodies and dense vegetation canopies and the highest values for desert and snow. It also changes with the angular distribution and spectral composition of the incident radiation and with the surface moisture. Satellite observations allow consistent measuring of the surface albedo at continental scale over a short period of time. Long-term series of surface albedo are good indicators of climate change, especially over glaciers and polar caps. On the other hand, the albedo of bare soil provides a good diagnostic of their degradation. The reliability of satellite albedo is verified against ground-based radiometers and UAV, which also serves to calibrate the instruments embarked on space-borne observing systems and check the quality of the atmospheric correction.