Devalopping hourly surface albedo product for GOES-R ABI

Abstract

Land surface albedo is a critical variable used in many climate and environmental applications. The multispectral Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) onboard the next generation geostationary satellites (GOES-R series, first launched in Nov. 2016) offers high temporal and medium spatial resolution observations, which can be used for monitoring diurnal variation of surface albedo. In this paper, we applied an optimization method to derive hourly surface albedo from geostationary satellite observations on a daily-basis. Data from the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) onboard the Japanese Himawari-8 satellite was used as a proxy for algorithm development, which has spectral bands and spatial resolutions similar to ABI. Validations against ground measurements and other satellite albedo products showed promising results for the surface albedo estimates, which can satisfy the accuracy requirements for downstream applications, particularly for the Environmental Monitoring Center at NOAA.