Annual dynamics of shortwave radiation of bare arable lands on a global scale incorporating their roughness

Smoothing soil surfaces, which had previously been deeply plowed, increases their albedo, which results in a lower amount of shortwave radiation being absorbed by their surface layer. Those surfaces emit less long-wave radiation too, leading to a reduction in their surface temperature, which can affect the climate. This paper quantitatively estimates the highest possible amount of shortwave radiation that could be reflected throughout the year from bare soils on arable land in the most extensive agricultural regions, where major crops are cultivated, on six of the Earth’s continents. The estimation refers to the highest levels of soil radiation occurring during clear-sky conditions without any clouds when the surfaces that had been conventionally tilled were bare for several days or more after the day of planting and were air-dried in two extreme roughness states: those formed by a plow and a smoothing harrow. The annual dynamics of reflective shortwave radiation of the bare soils were obtained using vectorized and rasterized geostatistical data sets about the areas of the soils and periods when they were bare, as well the spectra of the soil units that occupied the majority of these areas. Adding together all of the diurnal amounts of shortwave radiation reflected from the bare soils for each of the regions in the world, it was found that their radiation peak, appearing on the 140th days of the year, can reach about 22 EJ/day for soils treated by a plow, and a further 3 EJ/day when they are smoothed by a smoothing harrow.