Analysis of the differences between the two kinds of MODIS albedos over China

To examine the differences between the albedos separately derived with the full inversion (FI) and the magnitude inversion (MI) over large area, a couple of contrastive inversion experiments were conducted with the Terra MODIS data of years 2002-2004 over China to achieve two different kinds of MODIS albedos under the same temporal and spatial circumstances. The statistical analyses revealed that: The absolute biases between the FI and MI albedos, including the black-sky albedo (BSA) and the white sky-albedo (WSA), were all less than 0.05 for the MODIS bands 1-7 and the three broad bands, i.e. the visible (VIS), the near infrared (NIR) and the shortwave (SW), and the absolute biases for BSA were distinctly less than those for WSA; the differences between the FI and MI albedos derived at infrared bands were larger than those derived at visible bands; the differences between the FI and MI albedos in summer were the largest among four seasons, while those in autumn were the smallest.