Spatial and Temporal Variability of Albedo from Enhanced Radiation Measurements in Oklahoma

In 1999, the Oklahoma Atmospheric Surface-layer Instrumentation System (OASIS) project placed instrumentation focused on observing the surface energy budget at 89 Oklahoma Mesonet stations. At any given time, 10 stations (designated “super sites”), were outfitted with additional instrumentation including a four component net radiometer with the capability to observe incoming and outgoing shortwave (solar) and longwave radiation. Data are available from the beginning of 2000 until October 2008. This data was filtered to remove observations non-representative of the days albedo (e.g. sunrise and sunset periods, cloudy days, and erroneous instrument readings) and monthly averages were computed for each of the super sites in order to develop a better understanding of the spatial and temporal variability of albedo in Oklahoma.