Reconstruction of Historical Land Surface Albedo Changes in China From 850 to 2015 Using Land Use Harmonization Data and Albedo Look‐Up Maps

Abstract

Abstract Land surface albedo is a critical parameter of the Earth's energy budget and has been greatly altered by climate change and human activities. To improve our understanding of historical land surface albedo changes and their climatic effects before the satellite remote sensing era, we reconstructed land surface albedo in China from 850 to 2015 using the historical land use harmonization version 2 (LUH2) data set and albedo look‐up maps, and estimated the radiative forcing induced by land surface albedo changes using atmospheric radiative kernels. The reconstruction results showed that the annual‐mean land surface albedo in China increased by 0.00110 during 850–2015, and the rate of increase was accelerated by the expansion of croplands during recent centuries. The most significant increases in land surface albedo were found in the Huang‐Huai‐Hai (HHH; +0.00646) and Northeast China (NE; +0.00501), which were primarily driven by anthropogenic land cover transformations (e.g., land reclamation, deforestation, and urbanization) and can be enhanced by the vegetation masking effect on snow cover. The radiative forcing induced by land surface albedo changes in China during 850–2015 and 1750–2015 was −0.09 ± 0.04 and −0.06 ± 0.02 W m−2, respectively, which indicated that the land surface albedo changes produced a slight climate cooling effect, helping to offset the warming effect caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Keywords

• land surface albedo
• radiative forcing
• historical reconstruction
• land cover changes
• China