Narrowband to broadband conversions of land surface albedo I: Algorithms

Land surface broadband albedo is a critical variable for many scientific applications. High-resolution narrowband satellite observations contain important information that enables us to map land surface albedo globally, and validate the coarse-resolution albedo products from the broadband sensors using ground “point/plot” measurements. However, the conversions from narrowband to broadband albedos of a general surface type have not been well established. Most studies compute total shortwave albedo based on either the empirical relations between surface total shortwave albedo measurements and satellite observations or radiative transfer simulations with the limited number of surface reflectance spectra because of the computational constraints. As a result, many conversion formulae for the same sensors are quite different. In this study, we applied an approach that decouples surface reflectance spectra from the real-time radiative transfer simulations so that many different surface reflectance spectra and the atmospheric conditions can be effectively incorporated. The conversion formulae, based on extensive radiative transfer simulations, are provided in this paper for calculating the total shortwave albedo, total-, direct-, and diffuse-visible, and near-infrared broadband albedos for several narrowband sensors, including ASTER, AVHRR, ETM+/TM, GOES, MODIS, MISR, POLDER, and VEGETATION. Some of these formulae were compared with the published formulae of the same sensors and further validations using extensive ground measurements will be discussed in the companion paper.