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Spatially Complete Global Surface Albedos Derived from Terra/MODIS DataSpectral land surface albedo is an important parameter for describing the radiative properties of the Earth. Accordingly it reflects the consequences of natural and human interactions, such as anthropogenic, meteorological, and phenological effects, on global and local climatological trends. Consequently, albedos are integral parts in a variety of research areas, such as general circulation models (GCMs), energy balance studies, modeling of land use and land use change, and biophysical, oceanographic, and meteorological studies. Recent production of land surface anisotropy, diffuse bihemispherical (white-sky) albedo and direct beam directional hemispherical (black-sky) albedo from observations acquired by the MODIS instruments aboard NASA s Terra and Aqua satellite platforms have provided researchers with unprecedented spatial, spectral, and temporal information on the land surface's radiative characteristics. Cloud cover, which cutails retrievals, and the presence of ephemeral and seasonal snow limit the snow-free data to approximately half the global land surfaces on an annual equal-angle basis. This precludes the MOD43B3 albedo products from being used in some remote sensing and ground-based applications, climate models, and global change research projects. An ecosystem-dependent temporal interpolation technique is described that has been developed to fill missing or seasonally snow-covered data in the official MOD43B3 albedo product. The method imposes pixel-level and local regional ecosystem-dependent phenological behavior onto retrieved pixel temporal data in such a way as to maintain pixel-level spatial and spectral detail and integrity. The phenological curves are derived from statistics based on the MODIS MOD12Q1 IGBP land cover classification product geolocated with the MOD43B3 data. The resulting snow-free value-added products provide the scientific community with spatially and temporally complete global white- and black-sky surface albedo maps and statistics. These products are stored on 1'(approximately 10 km) and coarser resolution equal-angle grids, and are computed for the first seven MODIS wavelengths, ranging from 0.47 through 2.1 microns, and for three broadband wavelengths, 0.3-0.7,0.3-5.0 and 0.7-5.0 microns.
Document ID
20050131686
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
King, Michael D.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Moody, Eric G.
(L-3 Communication Government Services, Inc. Vienna, VA, United States)
Platnick, Steven
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Schaaf, Crystal B.
(Boston Univ. Boston, MA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2004
Subject Category
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Meeting Information
Meeting: 16th Symposium on Global Change and Climate Variations
Location: San Diego, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: January 8, 2004
End Date: January 14, 2004
Sponsors: American Meteorological Society
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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