Analysis of temporal variations of surface albedo from MODIS

Land surface albedo is a key parameter in modeling radiative transfer in the atmosphere. Simulated climates are sensitive to specified albedo in models. The MODIS BRDF/Albedo Science Data Product represents the latest attempt at providing a dataset suitable for climate model comparisons. It is necessary to analyze the feature of white-sky and black-sky albedo, before its use in land surface models. White-sky (diffuse) and black-sky albedo (direct at local solar noon) in China from MODIS based on Lucht algorithm are calculated and analyzed. The differences of white-sky and black-sky albedo, for different land use/land cover are compared. The derived albedo exhibits clear interannual variation with large variation in Northern China. Black-sky albedo and white-sky albedo are characterized with different features for different land covers.