The answer is albedo. Albedo measures how bright an object is on which the sunlight is shining. This determines how much visible energy is directly reflected back into space. This level is given in percentage terms. In other words, what percent of the sun s visible energy is reflected.
Albedo levels are high for snow and ice, but low for forests and oceans.
You will talk about this in more depth in other activities. On the images, the brighter a region is the higher its albedo level will be. On the image below, can you guess what features have higher albedos. For the activity below, we are concerned with being able to measure this characteristic with our system. This activity will guide you through the basics and then it is time to explore.