Impact of forests on snow albedo: Lessons from the SnowEx campaign

There is a clear and urgent need to quantify seasonally varying snow water equivalent and albedo. In this study, the snow bidirectional distribution function (BRDF) from NASA Cloud Absorption Radiometer (CAR) will be used to analyze the impact of forests on snow albedo based on measurements from SnowEx field campaign in western Colorado over Grand Mesa and Senator Beck. Seasonal snow cover is the largest single component of the cryosphere in areal extent (covering an average of 46M km2 of Earth's surface (31 % of land areas) each year. Current space-based techniques underestimate storage of snow water equivalent (SWE) by as much as 50% [1, 2]. That number is likely to be greater in the boreal forest and other densely-forested areas around the globe, with the boreal forest being the largest biome on Earth (20M km²).