The Determination of Snow Albedo from Satellite Measurements Using Fast Atmospheric Correction Technique

Abstract

We present a simplified atmospheric correction algorithm for snow/ice albedo retrievals using single view satellite measurements. The validation of the technique is performed using Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) on board Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite and ground spectral or broadband albedo measurements from locations on the Greenland ice sheet and in the French Alps. Through comparison with independent ground observations, the technique is shown to perform accurately in a range of conditions from a 2100 m elevation mid-latitude location in the French Alps to a network of 15 locations across a 2390 m elevation range in seven regions across the Greenland ice sheet. Retrieved broadband albedo is accurate within 5% over a wide (0.5) broadband albedo range of the (N = 4155) Greenland observations and with no apparent bias.

Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE) automatic weather station data

“…The ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet has contributed substantially to rising sea levels during the past 2 decades (Shepherd et al, 2020), and this loss has been driven by changes in surface mass balance (SMB) as well as by solid ice discharge (Mouginot et al, 2019;Mankoff et al, 2020). SMB changes are typically assessed using regional climate models, but large uncertainties result in substantial model spread (e.g.…”

The Broadband Albedo of Snow

“…The derived equations can be used both for the estimation of clean snow microstructure and also in the Global Circulation Models (GCMs), which require simple functions to compute band averaged albedo (Marshall and Oglesby, 1994). There are numerous parameterizations of broadband albedo of pure snow and snow containing various impurities (Marshall and Warren, 1987;Marshall, 1989;Brun et al, 1992;Pirazzini, 2009;Gardner and Sharp, 2010;Dang et al, 2015;Kokhanovsky et al, 2020). A comprehensive review of various snow albedo parameterizations is given by Dang et al (2015).…”

Dark Glacier Surface of Greenland’s Largest Floating Tongue Governed by High Local Deposition of Dust

“…Satellite remote sensing approaches to detect albedo in ablation zones may provide valuable information for assessing the influence over time span of decades and to validate simulated albedo. Approaches like the one by Kokhanovsky et al [51] that employ a sophisticated atmospheric correction to Sentinel-3's OLCI instrument obtaining an albedo estimation of high accuracy can potentially be combined with a debris cover ratio, as proposed by Azzoni et al [52] allowing for separating in future better between debris/dust influence and grain size.…”