Putting the capital ‘A’ in CoCoRAHS: an experimental programme to measure albedo using the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow (CoCoRaHS) Network

摘要

The Community Collaborative Rain,Hail&Snow(CoCoRaHS)Network is a community-based network ofweather observers and thenlargest provider of daily precipitation observations in the USA. In this study, we embrace the CoCoRaHS mission to use low-costnmeasurement tools, provide training and education, and utilize an interactive website to create the first volunteer snow albedo networknto collect high-quality albedo data for research and education applications.We trained a sub-set of 18 CoCoRaHS observers in the statenof NewHampshire to collect albedo, snowdepth, and snowdensity between 23November 2011 and 15March 2012. At less than $700nper observer, CoCoRAHS data measured using an Apogee MP-200 pyranometer fall within u00010.05 of albedo values collected from anKipp and ZonenCMA6 at local solar noon. CoCoRAHS values range from0.99 for fresh snow to 0.34 for shallow, aged snow. Snowfreenalbedo ranges from 0.09 to 0.39, depending on the underlying ground cover. In the 2011/2012 dataset, albedo increasesnlogarithmicallywith snowdepth and decreases linearlywith snow density. The latter relationship is inferred to be a proxy for increasingnsnow grain size as snowpack ages and compacts, supported by spectral albedo measurements collected with an Analytical SpectralnDevices FieldSpec 4 spectrometer. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.