Evaluation of Five Satellite Top-of-Atmosphere Albedo Products over Land

Abstract

Five satellite top-of-atmosphere (TOA) albedo products over land were evaluated in this study including global products from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) (TAL-AVHRR), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) (TAL-MODIS), and Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES); one regional product from the Climate Monitoring Satellite Application Facility (CM SAF); and one harmonized product termed Diagnosing Earth's Energy Pathways in the Climate system (DEEP-C). Results showed that overall, there is good consistency among these five products, particularly after the year 2000. The differences among these products in the high-latitude regions were relatively larger. The percentage differences among TAL-AVHRR, TAL-MODIS, and CERES were generally less than 20%, while the differences between TAL-AVHRR and DEEP-C before 2000 were much larger. Except for the obvious decrease in the differences after 2000, the differences did not show significant changes over time, but varied among different regions. The differences between TAL-AVHRR and the other products were relatively large in the high-latitude regions of North America, Asia, and the Maritime Continent, while the differences between DEEP-C and CM SAF in Europe and Africa were smaller. Interannual variability was consistent between products after 2000, before which the differences among the three products were much larger.

Evaluation of Five Global Top-of-Atmosphere Outgoing Longwave Radiation Products

“…To fully understand the performance of the five TOA OLR products in different regions, we divided the world area into 12 parts (2 additional ANT and GRL parts added to [18]). Then, similar to Figure 4, we also calculated the HIRS, CERES, GEWEX, AVHRR, and CLARA monthly mean TOA OLR anomalies in each region, as shown in Figure 5.…”

“…Zhan et al (2019) intercompared five satellite TOA albedo products over land and found that the differences among these products in the high-latitude regions were relatively larger, which is different from the results of Zhan et al (2018). Larger differences were also found during the years before 2000 [18]. Susskind et al (2012) examined spatial anomaly time series of OLR as determined using observations from CERES and AIRS and found excellent agreement of the two OLR datasets in almost every detail [19].…”

Rethinking Climate, Climate Change, and Their Relationship with Water

“…In contrast to the inundation of literature, formal and informal, by plots of time-series of the global temperature, a literature review showed that there is little information on the climatic information of the Earth's albedo in absolute terms. A few papers and web sites give some "anomalies" on the monthly scale; for example, the site Measuring Earth's Albedo by NASA [126] shows a graph with annual "anomalies" for the period 2000-2011; this is also the case with a recent publication by Zhan et al [127]. One of the rare exceptions is a publication by Loeb and Wielicki [128], which gives a time-series plot of the top of atmosphere (TOA) global albedo but, unfortunately, only for one year, 2010.…”