Bibcode
Pallé, E.; Goode, P. R.; Montañés-Rodríguez, P.
Referencia bibliográfica
Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 114, Issue 9, CiteID D00D03
Fecha de publicación:
2
2009
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
The overall reflectance of sunlight from Earth is a fundamental
parameter for climate studies. Recently, measurements of earthshine were
used to find large decadal variability in Earth's reflectance of
sunlight. However, the results did not seem consistent with
contemporaneous independent albedo measurements from the low Earth orbit
satellite, Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES), which
showed a weak, opposing trend. Now more data for both are available, all
sets have been either reanalyzed (earthshine) or recalibrated (CERES),
and they present consistent results. Albedo data are also available from
the recently released International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project
flux data (FD) product. Earthshine and FD analyses show contemporaneous
and climatologically significant increases in the Earth's reflectance
from the outset of our earthshine measurements beginning in late 1998
roughly until mid-2000. After that and to date, all three show a roughly
constant terrestrial albedo, except for the FD data in the most recent
years. Using satellite cloud data and Earth reflectance models, we also
show that the decadal-scale changes in Earth's reflectance measured by
earthshine are reliable and are caused by changes in the properties of
clouds rather than any spurious signal, such as changes in the
Sun-Earth-Moon geometry.