The Broadband Albedo of Snow

Abstract

The asymptotic radiative transfer theory is used to derive the analytical approximation for the broadband albedo of pure and polluted snow surfaces. The technique for the determination of the effective snow grain size and also the snow specific surface area from the shortwave broadband albedo measurements is proposed.

Snow surface properties derived from PRISMA satellite data over the Nansen Ice Shelf (East Antarctica)

“…where λ = λ/ λ 0 , c = cp ci is the relative volumetric concentration of snow impurities, c p is the volumetric concentration of snow impurities, c i is the volumetric concentration of ice grains, Q is the inverse absorption enhancement factor assumed equal to 0.6 in this work, which is close to the average value of this Frontiers in Environmental Science frontiersin.org parameter for various snowpacks measured by Libois et al (2014), k(λ 0 ) is the volumetric absorption coefficient of impurities at the wavelength λ 0 defined as the ratio of average absorption cross section of particles to their average volume (Kokhanovsky, 2021c). The external mixture of ice grains and impurities is assumed.…”

“…16, 17 make it possible to determine both m and c from dual-wavelength PRISMA measurements in the visible. The retrieved value of m indicates the type of a impurities being close to one for black carbon and taking larger values for dust (Kokhanovsky, 2021c). Kokhanovsky et al (2021b) has proposed the following equation for the value of k(λ 0 ) (1/mm) in terms of m (see Table 2):…”

Retrieval of Snow Albedo and Total Ozone Column from Single-View MSI/S-2 Spectral Reflectance Measurements over Antarctica

“…The determination of the effective light absorption path makes it possible to estimate also snow broadband albedo [29,37] both from ground and satellite measurements. An important point is that the information on the effective absorption length makes it possible to retrieve both spectral and broadband snow albedo under the assumption of vertically and horizontally homogeneous snow surfaces.…”

An Improved Retrieval of Snow and Ice Properties Using Spaceborne OLCI/S-3 Spectral Reflectance Measurements: Updated Atmospheric Correction and Snow Impurity Load Estimation

“…For a given wavelength, the reflected radiance is equal to the incoming solar flux multiplied by the planar albedo, which itself depends on the absorption length 𝐿𝐿 and on the value of the escape function for the viewing angle 𝑢𝑢(𝜇𝜇 0 ). Integrating this product for all pixels is computationally expensive, so thee broadband planar albedo of clean snow was parameterized by the following equation as proposed by Kokhanovsky (2021b):…”