Albedo - spectrometer - mosaic (DP3.30011.001)

Albedo, the ratio of a surface’s reflected energy to its incident energy, is an important measurement for characterizing earth system energy balance. Light and dark surfaces correspond to high and low albedo, respectively. An opaque surface’s difference in energy reflected as compared to the energy incident on it is absorbed by the surface, increasing its temperature (Sabins, Jr., 1978). Albedo values depend on wavelength, illumination sources and geometry, sensor viewing geometry, reflectance as a function of angle and wavelength, as well as the scattering, absorbing, and re-radiating effects of the atmosphere. These factors are modeled/accounted for to best approximate a bi-hemispherical reflectance as would be measured in a laboratory setting. To this end, the wavelength-integrated surface reflectance, weighted with the global flux on the ground, is produced as the best practically achievable albedo measurement (Richter & Schlapfer, 2017). L3 Albedo is distributed in 1 km by 1 km tiles created by taking the most-nadir pixels from the flight lines acquired in the best weather conditions.

Latency:
AOP data will be available 60 days after the final collection day at a site. Note: Data for airborne collections in 2022 and 2023 are currently being added to the data portal under a new revision number (DP3.30011.002) since they are derived from BRDF corrected reflectance data, so will not be available here. Albedo derived from directional reflectance will still be available for earlier collections (pre 2022) until they are re-processed with all of the latest reflectance corrections.