Daily 1 km seamless Antarctic sea ice albedo product from 2012 to 2021 based on VIIRS data

Abstract. Sea ice albedo is a critical parameter for quantifying the energy budget in the Antarctic region. High spatiotemporal resolution sea ice albedo product is essential for Antarctic climate and environmental research. In this study, based on Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) reflectance data, we use the Multiband Reflectance Iteration (MBRI) algorithm to calculate sea ice albedo. This algorithm fully utilizes multi-band observations from single-angle/date observed information to correct the anisotropy of the sea ice surface. Additionally, spatiotemporal information is utilized to reconstruct albedo under cloudy-sky conditions, while correcting for cloud radiative forcing effects. A new daily seamless Antarctic sea ice albedo product with a 1 km resolution is then generated for the period 2012 to 2021. Monte Carlo simulations show that the average retrieval uncertainty of this product is 0.022, with higher uncertainty in backward observations. MBRI albedo product was validated using in situ measurements from Automatic Weather Stations (AWS). The results show that the bias is 0.02, with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.071. After upscaling to 25 km resolution and applying a 5-day temporal aggregation, the RMSE decreased to below 0.055. Compared to existing albedo products, the MBRI product exhibits improved spatial continuity due to the reconstruction of cloudy-sky pixels. Statistical analysis shows that albedo under cloudy-sky conditions is higher than under clear-sky conditions (mean difference: 0.035–0.064). The MBRI albedo product can be used to estimate sea ice albedo feedback, energy balance analysis and sea ice monitoring. The latest version of our albedo (version 2) and uncertainty datasets are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11216156 (Ma et al., 2024) and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15067607 (Ma et al., 2025), respectively.