This question came from Sarah Mccarey, one of our participants.
Rita Freuder's Answer: I checked up on a definition of albedo and found this one helpful, along with its examples:
Albedo is:
The fraction of the total light striking a surface that gets reflected from that surface. An object that has a high albedo (near 1) is very bright; an object that has a low albedo (near 0) is dark. The Earth's albedo is about 0.37. The Moon's is about 0.12.
Reflected shortwave radiation is measured in Energy units. According to the "About this data" for the NASA NEO dataset of reflected shortwave radiation,
The colors in the map show the amount of shortwave energy (in Watts per square meter) that was reflected by the Earth system for the given time period(s).
The percent of reflection is probably directly proportional to the reflected energy, but remember that in the EM spectrum, the shorter the wave length, the higher the energy of the light. So, you could have very high reflectance of low energy "light" - maybe even near 100 % which would be a 1. But since the light striking the surface and reflecting is low energy, the "number" that represents the energy will also be lower. Albedo seems to be the reflective property of an object - it could be applied to planets, or landcover. Reflected shortwave radiation is the measure of the energy reflected from planet, which changes daily and will depend in part on what energy of light is striking the surface, and perhaps on cloud-free conditions. I think it might be true that albedo assumes the conditions are cloud free when averaging the fraction light reflected from all the different surface textures on Earth (e.g. oceans, deserts, forests, fields and grasses, etc).
The range of values for the reflected short-wave radiation can be seen when you graph it using the ICE tool - maybe to draw a transect. The range of values for albedo is always 0-1.
Rita Freuder's Answer: I checked up on a definition of albedo and found this one helpful, along with its examples:
Albedo is:
The fraction of the total light striking a surface that gets reflected from that surface. An object that has a high albedo (near 1) is very bright; an object that has a low albedo (near 0) is dark. The Earth's albedo is about 0.37. The Moon's is about 0.12.
Reflected shortwave radiation is measured in Energy units. According to the "About this data" for the NASA NEO dataset of reflected shortwave radiation,
The colors in the map show the amount of shortwave energy (in Watts per square meter) that was reflected by the Earth system for the given time period(s).
The percent of reflection is probably directly proportional to the reflected energy, but remember that in the EM spectrum, the shorter the wave length, the higher the energy of the light. So, you could have very high reflectance of low energy "light" - maybe even near 100 % which would be a 1. But since the light striking the surface and reflecting is low energy, the "number" that represents the energy will also be lower. Albedo seems to be the reflective property of an object - it could be applied to planets, or landcover. Reflected shortwave radiation is the measure of the energy reflected from planet, which changes daily and will depend in part on what energy of light is striking the surface, and perhaps on cloud-free conditions. I think it might be true that albedo assumes the conditions are cloud free when averaging the fraction light reflected from all the different surface textures on Earth (e.g. oceans, deserts, forests, fields and grasses, etc).
The range of values for the reflected short-wave radiation can be seen when you graph it using the ICE tool - maybe to draw a transect. The range of values for albedo is always 0-1.
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