Global laser pulse reflectance at 1064 nm of snow and land surfaces from the Glas satellite Lidar

During the development of the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS), launched in 2003, it was understood that the values of surface pusle reflectance was an important design parameter for satellite laser altimeters and that the magnitude of observed pulse reflectance would have valuable applications. Thus a significant effort was made to obtain calibrated surface pulse reflectance from GLAS measurements. In this paper we describe the calibration and atmospheric correction procedures and present global measurement results for earth surface laser pulse reflectance.