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.