Traditionally the earth's reflectance has been assumed to be roughly constant, but large decadal variability, not reproduced by current climate models, has been reported lately from a variety of sources. We compare here the available datasets related to earth's reflectance, in order to assess the observational constraints on the models. We find a consistent picture among all datasets of an albedo decreased during 1985-2000 between 2-3 and 6-7 W/m2, which is highly climatologically significant. The largest discrepancy among the datasets occurs during 2000-2004, when several sets reveal an increasing trend in the reflectance, while CERES observations show a steady decrease of about 2 W/m2. Additionally, analysis of the recently realeased ISCCP data for 2000-2004 are presented. These later findings show a consistency in long-term trends between earthshine reflectance measurements and the global cloud properties and climate change.