Anisotropy Parameterization Development and Evaluation for Glacier Surface Albedo Retrieval from Satellite Observations

Ren, Shaoting, Miles, Evan S., Jia, Li, Menenti, Massimo, Kneib, Marin, Buri, Pascal, McCarthy, Michael J., Shaw, Thomas E., Yang, Wei and Pellicciotti, Francesca (2021) Anisotropy Parameterization Development and Evaluation for Glacier Surface Albedo Retrieval from Satellite Observations. Remote Sensing, 13 (9). p. 1714. ISSN 2072-4292

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13091714

Abstract

Glacier albedo determines the net shortwave radiation absorbed at the glacier surface and plays a crucial role in glacier energy and mass balance. Remote sensing techniques are efficient means to retrieve glacier surface albedo over large and inaccessible areas and to study its variability. However, corrections of anisotropic reflectance of glacier surface have been established for specific shortwave bands only, such as Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (L5/TM) band 2 and band 4, which is a major limitation of current retrievals of glacier broadband albedo. In this study, we calibrated and evaluated four anisotropy correction models for glacier snow and ice, applicable to visible, near-infrared and shortwave-infrared wavelengths using airborne datasets of Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF). We then tested the ability of the best-performing anisotropy correction model, referred to from here on as the ‘updated model’, to retrieve albedo from L5/TM, Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (L8/OLI) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery, and evaluated these results with field measurements collected on eight glaciers around the world. Our results show that the updated model: (1) can accurately estimate anisotropic factors of reflectance for snow and ice surfaces; (2) generally performs better than prior approaches for L8/OLI albedo retrieval but is not appropriate for L5/TM; (3) generally retrieves MODIS albedo better than the MODIS standard albedo product (MCD43A3) in both absolute values and glacier albedo temporal evolution, i.e., exhibiting both fewer gaps and better agreement with field observations. As the updated model enables anisotropy correction of a maximum of 10 multispectral bands and is implemented in Google Earth Engine (GEE), it is promising for observing and analyzing glacier albedo at large spatial scales.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: glacier surface albedo, anisotropy correction, albedo retrieval, remote sensing
Subjects: F800 Physical and Terrestrial Geographical and Environmental Sciences
Department: Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Geography and Environmental Sciences
Depositing User: John Coen
Date Deposited: 30 Apr 2021 09:34
Last Modified: 31 Jul 2021 16:04
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/46063

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