Land Surface Albedo (AL) is a key variable for characterising the energy balance in the coupled soil-vegetation-atmosphere system. The albedo quantifies the part of the energy that is absorbed and transformed into heat and latent fluxes. Owing to strong feedback effects the knowledge of albedo is important for determining weather conditions at the atmospheric boundary layer. Climate sensitivity studies with Global Circulation Models have confirmed the unsteady nature of the energy balance with respect to small changes in surface albedo. Other domains of applications are in hydro-meteorology, agro-meteorology and environment-related studies.
Available Products:
- MDAL: daily surface albedo estimates (with a characteristic time scale of 5 days) based on observations performed by SEVIRI/MSG; demonstration product available for the Indian Ocean Data Coverage (IODC)
- MTAL: 30-day composites of MDAL updated every 10 days; demonstration product available for the Indian Ocean Data Coverage (IODC)
- ETAL: 10-daily surface albedo estimates (with a characteristic time scale of 20 days) based on observations performed by AVHRR/Metop
The use of LSA SAF products in publications is kindly requested to be duly acknowledged:
[product] was provided by the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA SAF; Trigo et al., 2011)
http://lsa-saf.eumetsat.int
Trigo, I. F., C. C. DaCamara, P. Viterbo, J.-L. Roujean, F. Olesen, C. Barroso, F. Camacho-de Coca, D. Carrer, S. C. Freitas, J. García-Haro, B. Geiger, F. Gellens-Meulenberghs, N. Ghilain, J. Meliá, L. Pessanha, N. Siljamo, and A. Arboleda, 2011: The Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis. Int. J. Remote Sens., 32, 2725-2744, doi: 10.1080/01431161003743199
Product specific citations:
- MDAL [LSA-101]:
Geiger, B., Carrer, D., Franchisteguy, L., Roujean, J.-L. & Meurey, C., 2008: Land surface albedo derived on a daily basis from Meteosat second generation observations. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 46, 3841–3856.
- MTAL [LSA-102, LSA-150]:
Carrer, D.; Moparthy, S.; Lellouch, G.; Ceamanos, X.; Pinault, F.; Freitas, S.C.; Trigo, I.F., 2018: Land Surface Albedo Derived on a Ten Daily Basis from Meteosat Second Generation Observations: The NRT and Climate Data Record Collections from the EUMETSAT LSA SAF. Remote Sens., 10, 1262. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10081262
- ETAL [LSA-103]:
Lellouch, G.; Carrer, D.; Vincent, C.; Pardé, M.; C. Frietas, S.; Trigo, I.F., 2020: Evaluation of Two Global Land Surface Albedo Datasets Distributed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the EUMETSAT LSA-SAF. Remote Sens., 12, 1888. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12111888
- ETAL-R [LSA-152]:
Delmotte, A., Juncu, D., Ceamanos, X., Trigo, I. F., and Gomes, S., 2024. Upgrade and extension of LSA-SAF land surface albedo archive from EPS Metop/AVHRR: description and quality assessment. European Journal of Remote Sensing, 2300043, 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/22797254.2023.2300043
Available data formats:
- Geostationary/sinusoidal grid in HDF5
- Regular grid in NETCDF4
Data Server information:
Register here to access the LSA-SAF Data Server
When available, the Data Record (DR) datasets replace the corresponding Near Real Time (NRT) data in the Data Server for the overlapping period. The DR ensures continuous times series since it is produce with the most recent algorithm version. To obtain NRT data for the DR period plase contact the Help Desk.
| Product | Sensor/ Platform | Spatial coverage | Spatial resolution | Temporal Coverage | Temporal resolution | Documentation | Data access | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | MSG Daily ALv2 | SEVIRI/ MSG | Europe, Africa, South America | 3 km 0.05ox0.05o | 2004-NRT | daily | Access Here | MSG/MDALv2 |
| MSG Daily AL | SEVIRI/ MSG | Europe, Africa, South America | 3 km 0.05ox0.05o | 2016-NRT | daily | Access Here | |
| MSG Daily AL | SEVIRI/ MSG | Europe, Africa, South America | 3 km 0.05ox0.05o | 2004-2015 | daily | Access Here | |
 | MSG-IODC | SEVIRI/ MSG | Europe, Africa, Middle East | 3 km 0.05ox0.05o | 2017-NRT | daily | Access Here | MSG-IODC/MDAL |
 | MSG 10-day ALv2 | SEVIRI/ MSG | Europe, Africa, South America | 3 km 0.05ox0.05o | 2004-NRT | 10-daily | Access Here | MSG/MTALv2 |
| MSG 10-day AL | SEVIRI/ MSG | Europe, Africa, South America | 3 km 0.05ox0.05o | 2016-NRT | 10-daily | Access Here | |
| MSG 10-day AL | SEVIRI/ MSG | Europe, Africa, South America | 3 km 0.05ox0.05o | 2004-2015 | 10-daily | ||
| MSG-IODC | SEVIRI/ MSG | Europe, Africa, Middle East | 3 km 0.05ox0.05o | 2017-NRT | 10-daily | Access Here | |
 | EPS AL | AVHRR/ Metop | Global | 1 km 0.01ox0.01o | 2015-NRT | 10-daily | ||
| EPS AL Data Record | AVHRR/ Metop | Global | 1 km 0.01ox0.01o | 2008-2021 | 10-daily |