edu.ucar.opensky::articles:25102 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-24T22:54:52.348749 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7zk5m6q https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4305014 https Related Dataset #1 Effective broadband optical parameters for snow albedo simulation in climate models https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5555159 https Related Dataset #2 Physics-Based Narrowband Optical Parameters for Snow Albedo Simulation in Climate Models Physics-based narrowband optical parameters for snow albedo simulation in climate models 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7zk5m6q https://doi.org/10.1029/2020MS002431 Wang, W. author He, Cenlin author Moore, J. author Wang, G. author Niu, G. author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher Accurate snow albedo simulation is a prerequisite for climate models to produce reliable climate prediction. Climate models would benefit from schemes of snowpack radiative transfer that are responsive to changing atmospheric conditions. However, the uncertainties in the narrowband snow optical parameters used by these schemes have not been evaluated. Conventional methods typically compute these narrowband parameters as irradiance-weighted averages of the spectral snow optical parameters, with the single scattering albedo being additionally weighted by the optically thick snowpack albedo. We first evaluate the effectiveness of the conventional methods as adopted by the widely used Community Land Model (CLM). Snow albedo calculations using the CLM narrowband optical parameters are relatively accurate for very thin snow (e.g., a bias of 0.01 for a 2-cm snowpack). The error, however, becomes larger as snowpack thickens (with biases of up to 0.05 for semi-infinite snowpack), because the snow radiative transfer is highly nonlinear and is most significant at wavelengths <1 mu m. In this study, we propose a novel method to retrieve broadband optical parameters according to snow radiative transfer theory, reducing the albedo biases to <0.003 for 2 cm snowpacks and <0.005 for thick snowpacks. We find little impact in changing incident spectra on narrowband snow albedo. These newly derived narrowband optical parameters improve snow albedo accuracy by a factor of 10, allowing to trace the impacts of aerosol pollution in snow. The parameters are independent of which two-stream approximation is used, and are thus applicable to sea ice, glaciers, and seasonal snow cover. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. None eng geoscientificInformation