Albedo


Land Surface Albedo

 


Land Surface Albedo (AL)

Land Surface Albedo (AL) is a key variable for characterising the energy balance in the coupled soil-vegetation-atmosphere system. The albedo quantifies the part of the energy that is absorbed and transformed into heat and latent fluxes. Owing to strong feedback effects the knowledge of albedo is important for determining weather conditions at the atmospheric boundary layer. Climate sensitivity studies with Global Circulation Models have confirmed the unsteady nature of the energy balance with respect to small changes in surface albedo. Other domains of applications are in hydro-meteorology, agro-meteorology and environment-related studies.

Available Products:

  • MDAL: daily surface albedo estimates (with a characteristic time scale of 5 days) based on observations performed by SEVIRI/MSG; demonstration product available for the Indian Ocean Data Coverage (IODC)
  • MTAL: 30-day composites of MDAL updated every 10 days; demonstration product available for the Indian Ocean Data Coverage (IODC)
  • ETAL: 10-daily surface albedo estimates (with a characteristic time scale of 20 days) based on observations performed by AVHRR/Metop

 

The use of LSA SAF products in publications is kindly requested to be duly acknowledged:

[product] was provided by the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA SAF; Trigo et al., 2011)
http://lsa-saf.eumetsat.int

Trigo, I. F., C. C. DaCamara, P. Viterbo, J.-L. Roujean, F. Olesen, C. Barroso, F. Camacho-de Coca, D. Carrer, S. C. Freitas, J. García-Haro, B. Geiger, F. Gellens-Meulenberghs, N. Ghilain, J. Meliá, L. Pessanha, N. Siljamo, and A. Arboleda, 2011: The Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis. Int. J. Remote Sens., 32, 2725-2744, doi: 10.1080/01431161003743199

Product specific citations:

  • MDALv2, MTALv2 [LSA-101.2, LSA-102.2]

Juncu, D., Ceamanos, X., Trigo, I. F., Gomes, S., and Freitas, S. C., 2022: Upgrade of LSA-SAF Meteosat Second Generation daily surface albedo (MDAL) retrieval algorithm incorporating aerosol correction and other improvements, Geosci. Instrum. Method. Data Syst., 11, 389–412, https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-11-389-2022.

  • MDAL [LSA-101]:

Geiger, B., Carrer, D., Franchisteguy, L., Roujean, J.-L. & Meurey, C., 2008: Land surface albedo derived on a daily basis from Meteosat second generation observations. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 46, 3841–3856.

  • MTAL [LSA-102, LSA-150]:

Carrer, D.; Moparthy, S.; Lellouch, G.; Ceamanos, X.; Pinault, F.; Freitas, S.C.; Trigo, I.F., 2018: Land Surface Albedo Derived on a Ten Daily Basis from Meteosat Second Generation Observations: The NRT and Climate Data Record Collections from the EUMETSAT LSA SAF. Remote Sens., 10, 1262. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10081262

  • ETAL [LSA-103]:

Lellouch, G.; Carrer, D.; Vincent, C.; Pardé, M.; C. Frietas, S.; Trigo, I.F., 2020: Evaluation of Two Global Land Surface Albedo Datasets Distributed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the EUMETSAT LSA-SAF. Remote Sens., 12, 1888. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12111888

Available data formats:

  • Geostationary/sinusoidal grid in HDF5
  • Regular grid in NETCDF4

Data Server information:

 

Register here to access the LSA-SAF Data Server

When available, the Data Record (DR) datasets replace the corresponding Near Real Time (NRT) data in the Data Server for the overlapping period. The DR ensures continuous times series since it is produce with the most recent algorithm version. To obtain NRT data for the DR period plase contact the Help Desk.

  Product Sensor/
Platform
Spatial
coverage
Spatial
resolution
Temporal
Coverage
Temporal
resolution
Documentation Data access
LSASAF_MSG_ALBEDO_MSG-Disk.png

MSG Daily ALv2
MDALv2 [LSA-101.2]

Operational

SEVIRI/
MSG
Europe, Africa,
South America
3 km
0.05ox0.05o
2023-NRT daily Access Here Data Server
LSASAF_MSG_ALBEDO_MSG-Disk.png

MSG Daily AL
MDAL [LSA-101]

Operational

SEVIRI/
MSG
Europe, Africa,
South America
3 km
0.05ox0.05o

2016-NRT

daily

Access Here

Data Server

LSASAF_MSG_ALBEDO_MSG-Disk.png

MSG Daily AL
Data Record

MDAL

Demonstration

SEVIRI/
MSG
Europe, Africa,
South America
3 km
0.05ox0.05o
2004-2015 daily Access Here
LSASAF_MSG-IODC_ALBEDO_IODC-Disk.png

MSG-IODC
Daily AL

MDAL

Demonstration

SEVIRI/
MSG
Europe, Africa,
Middle East
3 km
0.05ox0.05o
2017-NRT daily Access Here Data Server
LSASAF_MSG_ALBEDO-D10_MSG-Disk.png

MSG 10-day ALv2
MTALv2 [LSA-102.2]

Operational

SEVIRI/
MSG
Europe, Africa,
South America
3 km
0.05ox0.05o
2023-NRT 10-daily Access Here Data Server
LSASAF_MSG_ALBEDO-D10_MSG-Disk.png

MSG 10-day AL
MTAL [LSA-102]

Operational

SEVIRI/
MSG
Europe, Africa,
South America
3 km
0.05ox0.05o
2016-NRT 10-daily Access Here

Data Server

LSASAF_MSG_ALBEDO-D10_MSG-Disk.png

MSG 10-day AL
Data Record

MTAL [LSA-150]

Data Record DOI

SEVIRI/
MSG
Europe, Africa,
South America
3 km
0.05ox0.05o
2004-2015 10-daily

Access Here

LSASAF_MSG-IODC_ALBEDO-D10_IODC-Disk.png

MSG-IODC
10-day AL
MTAL

Demonstration

SEVIRI/
MSG
Europe, Africa,
Middle East
3 km
0.05ox0.05o
2017-NRT 10-daily Access Here

Data Server

HDF5_LSASAF_M01-AVHR_ETAL_GLOBE_201903050000.png

EPS AL
ETAL [LSA-103]

Operational

AVHRR/
Metop
Global 1 km
0.01ox0.01o
2015-NRT 10-daily

Access Here

Data Server

 

GO TO TOP