4.3 (Snow) Surface albedo and snow cover extent
The global all-sky snow-free surface albedo has been compared to the
MODIS albedo estimates in Fig. 7. The MODIS all-sky albedos were derived
from the black-sky (direct) and white-sky (diffuse) near-infrared and
visible wave band albedos by weighting them according to the
partitioning of solar radiation into these components. The MODIS data
were from collection 4, and were the climatological average of years
2001–2003. Overall, the simulated values were quite similar to the
MODIS values, except for certain mountain regions like the Tibetan
Plateau, the Rocky Mountains and some northern high latitude regions
like Siberia and Alaska.
The Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent was also compared with the
Northern Hemisphere EASE-Grid Snow Cover and Sea Ice Extent (Brodzik and
Armstrong 2013) data, as displayed in Fig. 8. It was seen that CAS-LSM
simulated quite well the NH snow cover extent, with an overestimate of
the snow near the Tibetan Plateau and minor underestimate in parts of
Europe and near-polar regions in North America.