AgriMetSoft


What is the albedo definition? What is the typical value of albedo?

Albedo definition is the amount of solar energy reflected from the Earth's surface back to space as a shortwave length/radiation. The value ranges from 0-100%. For example, less than 10% for new asphalt road to greater than 95% for fresh snow).

After albedo definition, we wants to the typical value of albedo, namely, the typical value can be within the range of 0.2 and 0.4 or average on around 0.25. Low albedo can occur in agricultural field, where the field is fully covered by the healthy crops. If the agricultural field is sparsely covered by the crop, the soil will be exposed to the surface and can increases the amount of net solar radiation to be reflected. At early stage, significant amount of solar radiation can be absorbed on the bare land and later reflected to the air. These could result an agricultural field with high surface albedo.

There is also another point related the value of albedo, vegetation, and net solar reflectance as:

Vegetation with high rate of surface albedo exhibits low rate of evapotranspiration. In contrary, low rates of albedo results high rates of evapotranspiration. This indicates that high rate of albedo, results high net solar radiation reflectance and resulted low water loss, since the incoming heat flux is low. These leads to low evapotranspiration. Whereas, in low rates of albedo, the net solar reflectance is low, so large amount of heat transfer to the vegetation region, which enhances water loss by evaporation and evapotranspiration.

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