MODIS White Sky Albedo Image Improves Climate Modeling

  • Released Monday, July 1, 2002
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The MODIS instrument, flying aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, measures how much solar radiation is reflected by the Earth's surface almost every day over the entire planet. The colors in this image emphasize the albedos ranging from 0.0 to 0.4 over the Earth's land surfaces. Areas colored red show the brightest, most reflective regions; yellows and greens are intermediate values; and blues and violets show relatively dark surfaces. White indicates no data were available, and no albedo data are provided over the oceans. This image was produced using data composited over a 6-day period, from April 7-22, 2002.

This annimation shows a global view of the Climate Modeling Grid (CMG) version of the global broadband white sky albedo. The product correlates 16 days worth of data

Color Bar ranges from 0.0(violet) to 0.4(red).  An albedo of 0.0 denotes the area does not scatter light and albedo of 1 represents 100% of the incident of light

Color Bar ranges from 0.0(violet) to 0.4(red). An albedo of 0.0 denotes the area does not scatter light and albedo of 1 represents 100% of the incident of light

Video slate image reads "Whitesky Albedo".

Video slate image reads "Whitesky Albedo".

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Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio

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This page was originally published on Monday, July 1, 2002.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:57 PM EDT.


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