Views of the Earth from NASA:
(click on the images to go to the original source)

Earth from space. Note how light clouds, snow, and ice are, and how dark the ocean is compared to the land.

Earth from space, clouds removed. Note how dark the ocean is compared to the land.
The lower image is a satellite montage, showing every spot on the earth as it would look WITHOUT clouds.

For these diagrams, answer the following questions (they do not have to be turned in until you do the Canvas exercise):
  1. Which is darker, land or ocean?
  2. Which is reflecting more light?
  3. Did you predict that?
  4. Of the land, which reflects the most light (has the HIGHEST albedo)?
    • desert
    • grassland
    • rainforest
    • snow and ice
  5. Put the surfaces in the list above into their order from highest to lowest albedo.
  6. What man-made surface would have an extremely LOW albedo?
  7. What kind of observation might you make that shows that not all light is reflected by ocean water?
  8. Why do you think that you might have guessed wrong on the 1st question that led to this web page?