MODIS glacier surface albedo across the Third Pole (2001-2020, 500 m)

This dataset is half-monthly glacier albedo derived by MODIS surface reflectance data from 2001 to 2020 with 500 m spatial resolution across the Third Pole. The dataset is calculated by averaging valid daily albedos during each half-monthly period, i.e., 24 phases per year and 480 phases in total. This dataset is generated by our improved glacier surface albedo retrieval method with Aqua/Terra-MODIS surface reflectance data (MOD09GA/MYD09GA). The result of evaluation shows that this dataset has a good agreement with in-situ observations and high-resolution remote sensed retrievals, and can accurately obtain the inter-annual and annual variability of glacier surface albedo. This dataset can be used to explore the reason of glacier changes over the whole Third Pole and also provide a calibration and validation dataset for glacier models.

The file name is " yyyymm01.tif/yyyymm02.tif ", where “yyyy” represents the year, “mm” represents the month, “01/02” represents the first/ second half-month. For example, “20010101.tif” is the glacier surface albedo data in the first half-month of January, 2001 over the whole Third Pole. Method of data process: This dataset is stored in GeoTIFF with WGS84 coordinate system and float data type. It can be open and processed by ArcGIS, Matlab software.