Earth Radiation Budget Satellite Data from 1984 to 1986

1984 to 1986 satellite measurements of Earth's radiation budget from the ERBE mission. The dataset contains daily and hourly longwave radiation and albedo values, as well as monthly averages. Data was produced by NASA's SCIOPS organization and last updated in May 1987.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's energy balance by analyzing daily_longwave_radiation and daily_albedo time series.
• Investigating diurnal cycles using hourly_longwave and hourly_albedo data.
• Calculating climate trends by aggregating monthly_mean_longwave and monthly_mean_albedo values.
• Comparing scanner instrument data against wide_field_instrument data for sensor validation.

Strengths

• Covers a 2-year time period from November 1984 to October 1986.
• Provides data at daily, hourly, and monthly temporal resolutions.
• Includes separate data streams from scanner and wide field instruments.

Limitations

• Data is over 35 years old and may not reflect current atmospheric conditions.
• Unknown sample size and spatial resolution limits analysis of geographic variability.
• Lacks documented column definitions and file formats.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata via the Barkstrom's Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE).

Collection Method

Satellite observations from the ERBE mission instruments.

Time Range

1984-11 to 1986-10

Freshness

Last updated 1987-05-31; static historical dataset.

Geography

Global coverage from satellite orbit.