MERIS Global Land Surface Albedo
ESA has taken the initiative to generate a global land surface albedo product, compatible with the user community requirements.
Albedo is the measure of the reflectivity of the earth surface. It is the ratio of the radiation reflected to the amount of solar radiation incident upon it. The fraction, usually expressed as a percentage from 0% to 100%, is an important concept in climatology.
The objective of the project is to derive 16-days averaged maps of spectral and broadband albedos from data acquired by the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) at a spatial resolution of 0.05° x 0.05°.
The surface albedo, as derived from MERIS data, will significantly improve the estimation of MERIS atmospheric products and will be used as auxiliary parameters in the ENVISAT Ground Segment for the generation of standard MERIS Level2 products, as well as in climate and environmental studies.
The processing chain includes cloud detection, smile correction, land-water classification, atmospheric correction, BRDF correction and retrieval of white sky and black sky albedo. The software has been implemented as a BEAM processor and the final products are available on this WebSite as BEAM DIMAP files.
The work has been performed by the Free University Berlin, Brockmann Consult and University College London under contract to ESA.
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