ABOUT

The spherical albedo of the Earth is computed from the directional irradiance measurements done by the DSCOVR/EPIC instrument in ten wavelength channels in visual wavelengths. The directional irradiances are converted into top-of-atmosphere integrated shortwave albedo using the angular distribution models (ADMs) from the CERES project. An in-house built algorithm is used to separate clear-sky land or ocean pixels from cloud-covered pixels, and a suitable ADM is selected accordingly.

The EPIC images are produced 13 (in winter) to 22 (in summer) times per day, and the latest images are downloaded and their albedo values extracted once per day. We offer both the individual global albedo values from all the images, or daily, weekly, and monthly averages.

The method and the albedo product is published in:
Penttilä A, Muinonen K, Ihalainen O, Uvarova E, Vuori M, Xu G, Näränen J, Wilkman O, Peltoniemi J, Gritsevich M, Järvinen H, and Marshak A. (2022). Temporal Variation of the Shortwave Spherical Albedo of the Earth. Frontiers in Remote Sensing 3, 790723. DOI:10.3389/frsen.2022.790723, local copy FRS-vol3-2022-Penttila-albedo.pdf.
If you publish something related to this product, please cite this source.