Method to determine snow albedo values in the ultraviolet for radiative transfer modeling.

For many cases modeled and measured UV global irradiances agree to within +/-5% for cloudless conditions, provided that all relevant parameters for describing the atmosphere and the surface are well known. However, for conditions with snow-covered surfaces this agreement is usually not achievable, because on the one hand the regional albedo, which has to be used in a model, is only rarely available and on the other hand UV irradiance alters with different snow cover of the surface by as much as 50%. Therefore a method is given to determine the regional albedo values for conditions with snow cover by use of a parameterization on the basis of snow depth and snow age, routinely monitored by the weather services.