I may be still confused, but I did not think measuring albedo cared greatly what was causing the absorption.
Do you disagree with the fact that we can measure quite accurately the energy imbalance between what is coming from the sun and what is being sent back to space? If you do disagree then you can declare we can not accurately measure albedo. If on the other hand you state that we can accurately make energy imbalance measurements then you must also agree that we can make accurate measurements of the albedo because they are directly related one with other. High albedo=cold, low albedo= hot, relative to total energy received.
Now Jason Box is very interested in what is causing lower albedo in Greenland and whether it is short or long term, he is not measuring directly what the albedo is.
As I stated before measuring albedo should not be a big problem, what is causing the exact albedo is a whole different story. Those two issues should be kept separate because they are very separate questions. In actual fact what satellites are determining when what they are seeing as to whether they are looking at FYI, MYI, snow, fractures, meltwater, algae .... is reflection which is what albedo is. How much light is getting reflected is never a point for those satellites directly as a sole point of interest, what they are trying to determine is why it is being reflected or absorbed. In that case because so many things can give off very similar signals that is what causes the problems of determining what you are looking at.
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