User consultation

GlobAlbedo preparatory User Consultation

The user consultation meeting for the DUE GlobAlbedo project was held at ESRIN on 24 September 2008, with 22 participants.

Albedo is the fraction of incident solar radiation which is reflected by the Earth's surface back out to space. This geophysical quantity is important for understanding and modelling the fluxes of energy which drive the climate system. The meeting brought users of albedo information from the meteorological and climate modelling communities together with experts in satellite albedo retrieval. The state of the art in retrieving land surface albedo from satellite data was reviewed, and the users presented their requirements for albedo information. Following this, a set of feasible user requirements was drafted to provide the focus of the GlobAlbedo project, which is expected to kick-off during 2009.

Meeting Agenda

Introduction

Scope of the meeting - Simon Pinnock (ESA/ESRIN)
Definitions of surface albedo - Gabriela Schaepman (U. Wageningen)

Session #1 - Existing and potential global surface albedo products at medium resolution

MODIS/VIIRS - Crystal Schaaf (Boston University, USA)
MERIS - Jurgen Fischer (FUB, Germany)
SPOT-VGT - Patrice Bicheron (MEDIAS, France)
(A)ATSR - Peter North (Swansea, UK)
MSG/POLDER - Jean-Louis Roujean (Meteo France)
MISR - Bernard Pinty (JRC)
Exploiting the geostationary satellite data archive - Yves Govaerts (EUMETSAT)