Seasonal variation in boreal pine forest albedo and effects of canopy snow on forest reflectance

Abstract

The low shortwave albedo of evergreen coniferous forests increases net radiation and thus the local temperature as compared to open areas. The difference between albedos of evergreen forests and open areas is most pronounced in winter and spring, when the forest canopies mask the reflective ground snow. However, also the albedo of coniferous evergreen forests changes as a function of the amount and optical properties of snow in the ground and canopy. In this study, we examined the shortwave radiation balance of a boreal Scots pine dominated forest. Canopy snow cover was observed to substantially influence the albedo, increasing it by about 0.2 as compared to snow free conditions. However, albedo varied greatly between and within the canopy snow classes, probably due to differences in illumination conditions and snow amount and properties. During midwinter months, most of the incident solar radiation was reflected during days with a lot of snow in the canopy. The difference in reflected radiation between the winters with least and most snow was 54MJm−2, which was also close to the difference (55MJm−2) between the reflectance of an average winter and that of a simulated snow free winter, corresponding to less than 2% of the annual solar irradiance. The albedo of the forest was greatest in midwinter, when the cold weather and low solar radiation caused the falling snow to remain on the tree branches. As the incident solar radiation in these months is very low, we concluded that the positive feedback to climate warming in case of a potentially decreased snow cover in this boreal pine forest would remain small.