Surface ALbedo VALidation (SALVAL) Platform: Towards CEOS LPV Validation Stage 4—Application to Three Global Albedo Climate Data Records

Abstract

The Surface ALbedo VALidation (SALVAL) online platform is designed to allow producers of satellite-based albedo products to move to operational validation systems. The SALVAL tool integrates long-term satellite products, global in situ datasets, and community-agreed-upon validation protocols into an online and interactive platform. The SALVAL tool, available on the ESA Cal/Val portal, was developed by EOLAB under the framework outlined by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) Working Group on Calibration and Validation (WGCV) Land Product Validation (LPV) subgroup, and provides transparency, consistency, and traceability to the validation process. In this demonstration, three satellite-based albedo climate data records from different operational services were validated and intercompared using the SALVAL platform: (1) the Climate Change Service (C3S) multi-sensor product, (2) the NASA MODIS MCD43A3 product (C6.1) and (3) Beijing Normal University’s Global LAnd Surface Satellites (GLASS) version 4 products. This work demonstrates that the three satellite albedo datasets enable long-term reliable and consistent retrievals at the global scale, with some discrepancies between them associated with the retrieval processing chain. The three satellite albedo products show similar uncertainties (RMSD = 0.03) when comparing the best quality retrievals with ground measurements. The SALVAL platform has proven to be a useful tool to validate and intercompare albedo datasets, allowing them to reach stage 4 of the CEOS LPV validation hierarchy.