Ocean Albedo

Nathaniel Oppenheimer

            For the research project, I was tasked with finding the average albedo of the water in the Suffolk County area. To find this, I first did a google search, which was somewhat helpful in ascertaining general information about albedo. However, I found most of my primary data from the NASA website. I searched “albedo” in their search engine, and lo and behold, many pages came up with great information. These pages allowed one to determine the albedo of the ocean as derived from their “Terra” satellite, which has an albedo “sensor” onboard. These great websites all had tools that allowed me to input a longitude or latitude, and then an albedo would pop up. To test this program for consistency, I choose several locations inside the Peconic Bay and in the Long Island Sound. In order to find the latitude and longitude for each of these locations, I consulted the United States Geological Survey. I plugged in the numbers, and for each of them I got .052 as the albedo.

The latitudes and longitudes I looked up are as follows:

[405944N, 0721823W] Sag Harbor Bay

[410206N, 0722152W] Shelter Island Sound

[410321N, 0722444W] Southold Bay

Albedo: .052