Snow Albedo and Radiative Transfer: Theory, Modeling, and Parameterization

Abstract

Snow is a critical component of the Earth climate and water systems, affecting surface water and energy fluxes and balance. Due to its strong ability to reflect sunlight, surface snow has significant positive feedback to the atmosphere (snow albedo feedback), resulting in enhanced climate change over high mountains and polar regions. Thus, it is important to accurately compute snow albedo in the solar spectrum. In the past decades, many theoretical and modeling approaches have been developed for snow radiative transfer and albedo calculations, with many important scientific advances on this topic. This chapter firstly reviews several widely-used theories and models for snow radiative transfer problems and then summarizes computational methods and major features of snow single-scattering properties that are required for radiative transfer calculations. Furthermore, a number of commonly-used snow albedo parameterizations developed for application in climate and weather models are presented. Finally, current challenges and future research directions are discussed.