CERES BDS Terra FM1: Top-of-Atmosphere Radiance and Instrument Data

CERES BDS Terra FM1 Edition 4 is a satellite data product containing geolocated and calibrated Top of the Atmosphere radiances and instrument data from the CERES-FM1 instrument on the Terra spacecraft. The dataset includes twenty-four hours of Level-1B data per instrument, with samples from various scan profiles and calibration views, along with converted satellite position and celestial data. It is produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Earth Observing System, with data collection ongoing.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's radiation budget based on calibrated Top of the Atmosphere radiances.
• Analyzing satellite instrument performance based on internal and solar calibration views.
• Studying atmospheric energy distribution patterns based on geolocated broadband radiometric measurements.
• Validating climate models based on time-series data from polar-orbiting satellites.

Strengths

• Data collection is explicitly stated as ongoing, suggesting continuous updates.
• Includes data from multiple scan modes (normal, short, fixed, rotating) and calibration views.
• Contains converted data not present in raw Level-0 files, such as satellite position and celestial data.
• Part of a long-term mission lineage following the ERBE mission, with instruments launched from 1997 to 2017.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected by the CERES-FM1 instrument on the Terra satellite platform.

Time Range

Data collection is ongoing; temporal coverage is not explicitly bounded.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 05:11:19.584454; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage from a polar-orbiting satellite.