Updated Surface Spectral Albedo Data Released

 
Published: 25 August 2021

This quicklook from the SURFSPECALB value-added product shows spectral albedo extrapolated from 6-channel multifilter radiometer albedos. There are two lines on a graph. One line is blue for 25-meter surface type, and the other is red for 10-meter surface type.
This example quicklook from the SURFSPECALB value-added product shows the estimated spectral albedo for the 10- and 25-meter towers at ARM’s Southern Great Plains atmospheric observatory on June 2, 2016. On that date, the surface type for both towers was all vegetation.

Updated data from the Surface Spectral Albedo value-added product (SURFSPECALB VAP) are available for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility’s North Slope of Alaska (NSA) and Southern Great Plains (SGP) atmospheric observatories. This VAP produces a near-continuous best estimate of high-spectral-resolution albedo—surface reflectivity—using measurements from multifilter radiometers and multifilter rotating shadowband radiometers.

New SURFSPECALB files are available for the NSA from June 11, 2016, through October 5, 2020; and for the SGP from December 4, 2018, through August 4, 2020.

ARM also recently completed end-to-end reprocessing of historical SURFSPECALB data for both observatories. The reprocessing brings all data up to current ARM data standards and corrects minor issues that do not affect the data quality. These corrections should not affect analysis done with previous data.

The reprocessing covers NSA data from April 7, 1998, through June 10, 2016; and SGP data from January 1, 2004, through December 3, 2018.

Scientists can use the reprocessed and new SURFSPECALB data now. The new files capture changes made during the reprocessing.

Regular annual processing of SURFSPECALB for the NSA and monthly processing for the SGP will resume this year.

More information on SURFSPECALB can be found on the VAP web page. For questions or to report data problems, please contact ARM translator Damao Zhang.

Access the data in the ARM Data Center. (Go here to request an account to download the data.)

To cite the SURFSPECALB data, please use doi:10.5439/1095394.

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ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.