## 5 Results
### Satellite Product Intercomparison
#### 5.1.2 Temporal Consistency  
The temporal profiles of the different SA products (PROBA-V SA v1.0, SPOT/VGT SA v1.0 and MCD43A3 C6) in the three broadband domains (visible, NIR, and total shortwave) were analyzed over the 725 LANDVAL sites for each main biome type (Figure 7). The analytical focus of the transition between SPOT/VGT and PROBA-V and the 2013-2014 period was represented. All the satellite products are displayed at the center of their temporal composite windows (30 days in the case of PROVA-V SA v1.0, 20 days in the case of SPOT/VGT SA v1.0 and 16 days in the case of MCD43A3 C6). Note that the information of the PROBA-V SA v1.0 QFLAG was also displayed in these graphs: Filled dots correspond to pixels flagged as good quality, and unfilled dots correspond to pixels flagged as low-quality (land pixels with bit 6, 10 or 11 to 1) according to Table 3.  
Figure 5: Percentage of gaps (%) during the year 2014 for the C3S PROBA-V SA v1.0 product considering all land pixels.  
Figure 6: Temporal variations of missing values for the year 2014 (**a**), and distribution of the temporal length of the missing values from December 2013 to May 2014 (**b**). Computation over LANDVAL sites for C3S PROBA-V SA v1.0 (purple), SPOT/VGT SA v1.0 (blue) and MCD43A3 C6 (green).  
Figure 7: SA time series of the C3S PROBA-V SA v1.0, C3S SPOT/VGT SA v1.0 and MCD43A3 C6 broadband black-sky albedos for selected LANDVAL sites (**a**) Evergreen Broadleaf Forest, (**b**) Broadleaved Deciduous Forest, (**c**) Needle-leaf Forest, (**d**) cultivate, (**e**) shrulbands/herbaceous/sparse vegetation, and (**f**) bare areas during the 2013–2014 period. Information on the sites is shown at the top of the corresponding figures. In the case of PROBA-V, filled dots correspond to ‘good quality’ pixels, and unfilled dots correspond to pixels flagged as ‘low-quality’ according to QFLAG (Table 3).  
For evergreen broadleaved forests, some temporal noise was observed in all satellite products. However, PROBA-V SA v1.0 and MCD43A3 C6 seem to provide less noise (i.e., flatter temporal trajectories) than SPOT/VGT SA v1.0, which seems to be more realistic for this biome type. For the rest of the biomes, the PROBA-V SA v1.0 profiles follow the temporal trends of SPOT/VGT SA v1.0 and MCD43A3 C6. The presence of rapid changes due to snow events, the occurrence of stable profiles and the phenological changes were consistent among the three datasets. However, PROBA-V SA v1.0 displays slightly large variability compared to other satellite products in the NIR domain (also affecting the total spectrum). Note that the use of the C3S PROBA-V SA v1.0 Quality Flag in northern latitudes removes valid snow observations in most cases.  
A seasonality effect was observed with the sign of the bias between C3S PROBA-V SA v1.0 and SPOT/VGT SA v1.0 during the short overlap period over desert areas for the NIR and total spectrum. PROBA-V SA v1.0 tends to provide slightly higher values than SPOT/VGT SA v1.0 from December 2013 to February 2014, and the opposite trend was found from March 2014 to May 2014. Additionally, the SPOT/VGT SA v1.0 temporal trajectories show some temporal noise over desert sites, which is not observed for the other satellite products (PROBA-V SA v1.0 and MCD43A3 C6).