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Investigating the land surface albedo trend in Iran using remote sensing data

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Abstract

The recent droughts in Iran have contributed to declining runoff, diminishing lake water levels, and rising salt levels due to lower runoff. This study aims to quantify how the recent changes affected to investigate the trend of land surface albedo in Iran between 2000 and 2018. Accessing field data from the Iran is difficult, and thus the common understanding of climate change in the region is strongly based on satellite data. We use remotely sensed data of land surface albedo, land surface temperature (LST), number of snow-covered days (SCDs), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and the land cover type, obtained from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The results show decreasing trends in albedo and SCDs by − 0.02 and − 0.52, respectively, and upward trends in the LST and NDVI data by 0.07 °C and 0.009, respectively. Due to the recent drought condition in Iran, SCDs decreased significantly, which might explain the reason behind the albedo decreases in winter time in Iran.

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Data availability

Data of visible black-sky albedo (VBSA) was collected from the MODIS website: (1) https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/product_search; (2) https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/. The data used in this study can be downloaded from the above website.

Code availability

In this paper, custom code in MATLAB software has been used.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Iran National Science Foundation (INSF) for the support of this article (n. 98024996). We also thank the MODIS albedo science team and the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) for providing the MCD43A3v006 albedo data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Climatology, Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran

    Ali Reza Karbalaee & Zahra Hedjazizadeh

  2. Department of Climatology, Faculty of Geographical Sciences, University of Esfahan, Esfahan, Iran

    Seyed Abolfazl Masoodian & Mohammad Sadegh Keikhosravi-Kiany

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  1. Ali Reza Karbalaee
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  3. Seyed Abolfazl Masoodian
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  4. Mohammad Sadegh Keikhosravi-Kiany
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Ali Reza Karbalaee, Zahra Hedjazizadeh, Seyed Abolfazl Masoodian, and Mohammad Sadegh Keikhosravi-Kiany. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ali Reza Karbalaee. And all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ali Reza Karbalaee.

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Karbalaee, A.R., Hedjazizadeh, Z., Masoodian, S.A. et al. Investigating the land surface albedo trend in Iran using remote sensing data. Theor Appl Climatol 150, 389–403 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04171-9

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