CERES Bidirectional Scans: NOAA-20 Satellite Radiometric Measurements

CERES FM6 instrument data provides geolocated and calibrated Top of Atmosphere filtered radiances from the NOAA-20 satellite launched in 2017. Each product contains twenty-four hours of Level-1B data, including samples from Earth scans and calibration views. The data is a key component of NASA's Earth Observing System, continuing the legacy of the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's radiation budget based on broadband channel radiometric measurements.
• Calibrating satellite sensor data based on internal and solar calibration views.
• Analyzing atmospheric energy flows based on geolocated Top of Atmosphere radiances.
• Validating climate models based on time-series data from a polar-orbiting satellite.

Strengths

• Data collection is explicitly stated as ongoing, suggesting continuous updates.
• Product includes additional converted data not found in raw Level-0 input, such as satellite position and velocity.
• Part of a long-term NASA EOS program with a documented instrument lineage dating back to 1997.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• Data may reflect the specific temporal and orbital bias inherent to the single NOAA-20 satellite platform.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Collected by the CERES FM6 instrument aboard the Joint Polar-Orbiting Satellite System 1 (JPSS-1/NOAA-20).

Time Range

Data collection began after the satellite launch on November 18, 2017, and is ongoing.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 05:10:35.973277; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage from a polar-orbiting satellite.