SCIAMACHY surface reflectivity climatology

The SCIAMACHY surface albedo database contains the Lambertian-equivalent reflectivity (LER) of the Earth's surface, derived from observations made by the SCIAMACHY satellite instrument, for each month of the year, for 34 wavelength bands ranging from 328 nm to 2314 nm. The spatial resolution of the database grid is 0.5 x 0.5 degrees but the real intrinsic spatial resolution is 1.0 x 1.0 degrees except near coastlines and for certain regions such as snow covered mountain ranges and the Sahara desert where it is 0.5 x 0.5 degrees. The reflectivity of the Earth's surface is an important input parameter for many satellite retrievals of atmospheric composition. The SCIAMACHY surface LER database was constructed to support satellite retrieval of trace gases and of cloud and aerosol information. The database is described in the following paper: L.G. Tilstra, O.N.E. Tuinder, P. Wang, and P. Stammes, Surface reflectivity climatologies from UV to NIR determined from Earth observations by GOME-2 and SCIAMACHY, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. 122, 4084-4111, doi:10.1002/2016JD025940, 2017.