Accurate top of the atmosphere albedo determination from multiple views of the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) instrument

Conference · Wed May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1996

OSTI ID:231903

Borel, C C; Gerstl, S A.W. ^[1]; Tornow, C ^[2]

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1. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
2. German Aerospace Research Establishment, Berlin (Germany)

Changes in the Earth`s surface albedo impact the atmospheric and global energy budget and contribute to the global climate change. It is now recognized that multispectral and multiangular views of the Earth`s top of the atmosphere (TOA) albedo are necessary to provide information on albedo changes. In this paper we describe four semi- empirical bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) models which are inverted for two and three unknowns. The retrieved BRF parameters are then used to compute the TOA spectral albedo for clear sky conditions. Using this approach we find that the albedo can be computed with better than one percent error in the visible and one and a half percent in the near infrared (NIR) for most surface types. Global monitoring of the earth radiation budget is one of the main goals in global change research programs. Thus global measurements of the TOA albedo are important. Our goals is to compute the TOA spectral albedo for clear sky conditions.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 231903
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--96-1128; CONF-960504--9; ON: DE96009033
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
ALBEDO
CLIMATIC CHANGE
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
ENERGY BUDGETS
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
MONITORING
RADIANT HEAT TRANSFER
RADIOMETERS
RESEARCH PROGRAMS