EPS 10-daily Surface Albedo Data Record - Metop

Land surface albedo is a key variable for characterising the energy balance in the coupled soil-vegetation-atmosphere system. The albedo quantifies the part of the energy that is absorbed and transformed into heat and latent fluxes. Owing to strong feedback effects the knowledge of albedo is important for determining weather conditions at the atmospheric boundary layer. Climate sensitivity studies with Global Circulation Models have confirmed the unsteady nature of the energy balance with respect to small changes in surface albedo. Other domains of applications are in hydro-meteorology, agro-meteorology and environment-related studies. This product provides 10-daily surface albedo estimates (with a characteristic time scale of 20 days) based on observations performed by AVHRR/Metop consistently reprocessed from 2008 to 2021, and is consistent with the operational real time EPS Surface Albedo product (ETAL LSA-103).