Reply to Referee #1 General Comment #1.

We thank Referee #1 for presenting critical comments on our paper of “Spectral albedo of arctic snow during intensive melt period”. Here we will give our reply to the Referee’s General Comment #1. Our reply to the other comments given by Referee#1 will follow. Referee #1, General Comment #1: “The si...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Er O, Räisänen P
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
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Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.467.3546
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/10/C11474/2010/acpd-10-C11474-2010-supplement.pdf
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Summary:We thank Referee #1 for presenting critical comments on our paper of “Spectral albedo of arctic snow during intensive melt period”. Here we will give our reply to the Referee’s General Comment #1. Our reply to the other comments given by Referee#1 will follow. Referee #1, General Comment #1: “The size of the snow patch used for the measurements was far too small (it extended only 3 m from the radiometer in one direction).” Our reply: We fully agree with the Referee: the fact that the snow patch we used extended only 3 m from the radiometer in one direction (North) is an issue that needs to be addressed. In an optimal solution, the sensor would have been located in the middle of the snow patch (size 80 m North-South, and 50 m East-West), but this was not possible in our case (see below). A first estimate for the albedo error associated with the edge effect can be obtained by assuming that the surface is a Lambertian reflector (solution provided by Dr. Petri Räisänen, FMI). Hence the radiance reflected by a surface element located at coordinates (x,y) in any zenith angle and azimuth angle equals