Albedo in an albedo range of 0.1 to 0.4. The average albedo of Earth is about 0.3. This is far higher than for the ocean primarily because of the contribution of clouds. Earth's surface albedo is regularly estimated via Earth observation satellite sensors such as NASA's MODIS instruments on board the Terra and Aqua satellites, and the CERES instrument on the Suomi NPP and JPSS. As the amount of reflected radiation is only measured for a single direction by satellite, not all directions, a mathematical model is used to translate a sample set of satellite reflectance measurements into estimates of directional-hemispherical
Bond albedo phase angles from the Earth, the only reliable data for measuring their Bond albedo comes from spacecraft. The Bond albedo ("A") is related to the geometric albedo ("p") by the expression where "q" is termed the "phase integral" and is given in terms of the directional scattered flux "I"("α") into phase angle "α" (averaged over all wavelengths and azimuthal angles) as The phase angle "α" is the angle between the source of the radiation (usually the Sun) and the observing direction, and varies from zero for light scattered back towards the source, to 180° for observations looking towards the source.