Satellite observations of changes in snow-covered land surface albedo during spring in the Northern Hemisphere

Atlaskina, K.; Berninger, F.; de Leeuw, G.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1879-2015

Articles | Volume 9, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1879-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Interactions between climate change and the Cryosphere: SVALI,...

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1879-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 9, issue 5

Research article

|

24 Sep 2015

Research article |

| 24 Sep 2015

Satellite observations of changes in snow-covered land surface albedo during spring in the Northern Hemisphere

K. Atlaskina, F. Berninger, and G. de Leeuw

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Final revised paper (published on 24 Sep 2015)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 07 May 2015)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C905: 'Review of Atlaskina et al. (2015)', Anonymous Referee #1, 28 May 2015
RC C1008: 'Comment to Atlaskina et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Jun 2015
AC C1598: 'Authors' response to reviewers', K. Atlaskina, 08 Sep 2015

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by K. Atlaskina on behalf of the Authors (09 Sep 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (11 Sep 2015) by Steffen M. Noe

AR by K. Atlaskina on behalf of the Authors (11 Sep 2015)

Short summary

Snow cover explained most of the spring surface albedo changes in the Northern Hemisphere in the years 2000−2012. However, there are vast areas where albedo changed up to ±0.2 under full snow-covered conditions. We found that if in these areas, the mean monthly air temperature exceeds a value between -15°C and -10°C, depending on the region, albedo decreases with an increase of the temperature. The complexity of processes involved in surface albedo changes is discussed.