Investigating the land surface albedo trend in Iran using remote sensing data

Abstract

The recent droughts in Iran have contributed to declining runoff, diminishing lake water levels, and rising salt levels due to lower runoff. This study aims to quantify how the recent changes affected to investigate the trend of land surface albedo in Iran between 2000 and 2018. Accessing field data from the Iran is difficult, and thus the common understanding of climate change in the region is strongly based on satellite data. We use remotely sensed data of land surface albedo, land surface temperature (LST), number of snow-covered days (SCDs), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and the land cover type, obtained from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The results show decreasing trends in albedo and SCDs by − 0.02 and − 0.52, respectively, and upward trends in the LST and NDVI data by 0.07 °C and 0.009, respectively. Due to the recent drought condition in Iran, SCDs decreased significantly, which might explain the reason behind the albedo decreases in winter time in Iran. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature.