Comparison of the albedo derived from MOS-B and WIFS with NOAA-AVHRR

Spatial modeling of hydrologic processes like evapotranspiration or runoff requires a large number of land surface parameters. One of the key parameters is albedo which determines the available solar energy at the surface. Until now NOAA-AVHRR with several repetitions a day was the preferred sensor to obtain surface albedo although its spatial resolution is only 1 km. Since the launch of the IRS-P3 satellite in March 1996 there are two new data sets available: MOS-B with a repetition rate of 19 days and WIFS with a temporal coverage of 5 to 19 days. They have a better spatial resolution than NOAA-AVHRR (MOS-B with 520x520 m and WIFS with 188x188 m). The radiometric resolution of WIFS is comparable to NOAA-AVHRR CHI and CH2. MOS-B provides data in 13 channels between 0.4 and 1.1 /spl mu/m comparable to the upcoming MERIS sensor on ENVISAT.