Study on land-surface albedo over different types of underlying surfaces in North China

Abstract

Land-surface albedo reflects the ability that land surface reflects solar radiation and plays a very important role in surface energy balance. By picking 10 different underlying surfaces including bare soil, cropland and grassland, the differences in the diurnal variation of land surface radiation and energy processes over North China are investigated using the data measured during July and September, 2008, provided by the Experimental Co-observation and Integral Research in Semi-arid and Arid Regions over North China, the characteristic of land-surface albedo and the response to precipitation are analyzed, and the relationships between land-surface albedo and solar altitude angle and soil humidity are studied. According to the average albedo, the sequence of albedo over all the underlying surfaces are arid meadow in the northeast of China>alpine meadow in the northwest of China>oasis farmland in the northwest>natural vegetation on the Loess Plateau>semi-arid meadow in the northeast of China>farmland in the northeast of China>fruit bearing forest in the northeast of China. And the albedo is smaller when the precipitation is much while it is bigger when the precipitation is less on the whole. The diurnal variation curves of albedo have three types: symmetric type, bigger in the morning and smaller in the noon and afternoon, biggest in the afternoon and smallest in the morning. In the selected 6 stations, the valley of albedo basically occurs on rainy days and the peak occurs on days which are not rainy but have strong solar radiation. The land-surface albedo decreases with the solar altitude angle increasing and tends to remain when the solar altitude angle is bigger than 40°. The land-surface albedo decreases obviously with soil moisture increasing in Yuzhong and farmland of Tongyu, then the grassland of Tongyu. And the land-surface albedos of Maqu, Miyun, Jinzhou have no significant change with the soil moisture.