The determination of snow specific surface area, albedo and effective grain size using AATSR space‐borne measurements

Abstract

New techniques to retrieve snow specific surface area (SSA), albedo and grain size from satellite data are described. The described methods are applied to the determination of the snow properties at the coast of Greenland. It was found that the effective grain diameters were about 0.5 mm and the specific surface area was about 150 cm²g⁻¹ for the region studied. The snow albedo was close to 0.93. The results were obtained using AATSR data. SSA spatial distribution was for the first time derived using satellite measurements.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to M. Mishchenko for providing his radiative code for our use and also ESA for AATSR data.