The influence of satellite spectral sensor response on the analysis of satellite imagery at high latitudes

Many polar-orbiting satellites used in high-latitude work employ instruments which sense only narrow regions of the solar spectrum. A radiative transfer scheme is used to illustrate the differences between broad-band albedos and those calculated using the spectral response of the NOAA-6 AVHRR channel 1 and DMSP visible sensors. The albedo contrast between snow/no snow is shown to be exaggerated by the satellite sensors and the impact of cloudiness over snow on the albedo is drastically reduced, by a factor of 10 in the case of the NOAA-6 sensor. A significant solar zenith angle dependence is also shown for the NOAA-6 sensor.