A multi-data comparison of shortwave climate forcing changes

Traditionally the Earth's reflectance has been assumed to be roughly constant, but large decadal variability, not reproduced by current climate models, has been reported lately from a variety of sources. We compare here the available data sets related to Earth's reflectance, in order to as...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical research letters 2005-11, Vol.32 (21), p.L21702.1-n/a
Main Authors: Pallé, E., Montañés-Rodriguez, P., Goode, P. R., Koonin, S. E., Wild, M., Casadio, S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Traditionally the Earth's reflectance has been assumed to be roughly constant, but large decadal variability, not reproduced by current climate models, has been reported lately from a variety of sources. We compare here the available data sets related to Earth's reflectance, in order to assess the observational constraints on the models. We find a consistent picture among all data sets of an albedo decreased during 1985–2000 between 2–3 and 6–7 W/m2, which is highly climatically significant. The largest discrepancy among the data sets occurs during 2000–2004, when some present an increasing reflectance trend, while CERES observations show a steady decrease of about 2 W/m2.
ISSN:0094-8276
1944-8007
DOI:10.1029/2005GL023847