The Earth's albedo (or reflectance) is the fraction of shortwave solar radiation that it reflects back to space. It is an essential determinant of the earth's climate, since, in the broadest sense, changes in climate arise from the simultaneous evolution of the solar intensity, the Earth's albedo, and greenhouse insulation.In the mid-1990's, the changing albedo was (and probably still is) the least understood of the three parameters (Houghton, 2000;IPCC, 2013). That uncertainty motivated our effort to measure of the earth's albedo continuously throughout at least one full solar cycle (two decades). The long data series would also help explore any correlations that might exist between varying solar activity and terrestrial reflectance (Gray et al.
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