"Albedo is a measure of reflected incoming radiation.
It’s extremely vital in climate science, and so it’s important to know what it actually is, and what its trend was.
I was taught in school that albedo is 0.3. NASA’s Earth Factsheet lists it as 0.306.
I have always used 0.3 for quick calculations.
Most climate science guides on the internet also use this value.
The history of albedo-finding is shown in this paper: History of Albedo
The real question is: is albedo actually reducing, or is our measurement techniques refining?
This matters a great deal, because:
A drop of as little as 0.01 in Earth’s albedo would have a major warming influence on climate
—roughly equal to the effect of doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,
which would cause Earth to retain an additional 3.4 watts of energy for every square meter of surface area.
— NASA
... The best available albedo data from 2000 to 2021 is available from CERES ( “the only project worldwide whose prime objective is to produce global climate data records of Earth’s Radiation Budget” ).
... Here is what the data shows:
0.2929 - 0.2891 = 0.0038
The theoretical albedo forcing would thus be
3.4 * 0.0038/0.01 = 1.292 W/m²
Thus the albedo forcing is twice as high as CO2 !
It’s because it’s twice as high that the IPCC and other climate change advocacy groups do not use albedo at all.
They refer to surface albedo, which favors slight cooling, but not to the atmospheric albedo which would ruin their neat narrative.
IPCC, AR5 Figure 8.17
Think about it."
Additional information
from the author responding
to a comment:
"Greatest albedo in December,
Lowest albedo in August. i.e.:
North Hurricane season has lowest albedo,
while Northern Winter has the greatest albedo."