Time-series of snow spectral albedo and superficial snow specific surface area and impurity content at Col de Porte, French Alps, 2014

• Main Authors: Picard, Ghislain, Arnaud, Laurent, Dumont, Marie
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2017
• Subjects: Col_de_Porte; DATE/TIME; Effective impurity mass per unit snow mass; French Alps; Monitoring station; MONS; Specific surface area; snow; The Cryosphere; The Cryosphere Discussions
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.874272; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.874272

Spectral albedo has been measured at Col de Porte from January until end of April 2014 in the visible and near infrared (400 - 1050 nm) at sub-hourly resolution using a home-made spectral radiometer. Calibration follows the procedure described in Picard et al. 2016 (doi:10.5194/tc-10-1297-2016). The specific surface area (SSA) and impurity content (black carbon equivalent) of the superficial snow have been retrieved for clear-sky days using an original methodology described in the companion paper Dumont et al., 2017. These variables are estimated by fitting the observed spectral albedo to a model that 1) takes into account the effect of the local slope and 2) uses the analytical Asymptotic Approximation Radiative Transfer theory (AART) to compute flat terrain albedo. The dataset includes calibrated albedo for solar zenith angles lower than 75°. The time series of SSA and impurity content are provided for the most likely seasonal scaling factor (0.943; see full description in the companion paper) and for two extreme values (0.920 and 0.964) which can be used to estimate the uncertainty range of the retrieved variables. Only SSA and impurity content that pass several quality checks are reported in the dataset (solar zenith angle lower than 75°, RMSD between measured and predicted albedo lower than 0.022, clear sky day only).