Understanding the variation of Reflected Solar Radiation: A Latitude- and month-based Perspective

Abstract. The hemispheric symmetry of planetary albedo (PA) is crucial for the Earth's energy budget. However, our understanding of hemispheric albedo is still limited, particularly regarding its variations at finer spatial and temporal scales. Using 21 years of radiation data from CERES-EBAF, this study quantifies the contribution rates of different latitudes to the hemispheric reflected solar radiation and examines their seasonal variations. Statistical results show that the northern latitudinal zones of 0° to 40° contribute more reflected radiation than the corresponding southern latitudes, but the southern latitudinal zones of 50° to 90° compensate for this. From the equator to 40°, the latitudinal contribution to the hemisphere is high in autumn and winter and low in spring and summer; however, after 50°, the situation is reversed. And even during extreme cases, anomalies of the cloud component contribution play a dominant role in anomalies of the total reflected radiation contribution of the latitudinal zone in most latitudinal zones. Additionally, this study evaluates the performance of four radiation data (including: satellite and reanalysis data) in reproducing hemisphere albedo and its hemispheric symmetry compared to CERES-EBAF data. Under different symmetry criteria, the applicability of different datasets to hemispheric symmetry of PA studies varies. Note that the Cloud_cci AVHRR performs better in capturing hemispheric symmetry. However, none of these datasets can decompose the different components of reflected radiation well. These results contribute to advancing our understanding of hemispheric symmetry variations and compensation mechanisms, reducing the uncertainty of model simulations, and improving algorithms for different radiation datasets.