CERES ERBE-like Gridded TOA Fluxes: Terra and Aqua Satellite Data

CERES instruments on Terra and Aqua satellites provide radiometric measurements of Earth's atmosphere from three broadband channels. The ES-9 product contains a month of space and time-averaged CERES data, sorted into 2.5-degree spatial regions, with daily and hourly average fluxes for clear-sky and total-sky scenes. This data is a follow-on to the ERBE mission and is a key component of NASA's Earth Observing System.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's radiation budget based on top-of-atmosphere shortwave and longwave flux averages.
• Analyzing diurnal cycles of atmospheric energy based on hourly average fluxes sorted by local hour.
• Comparing clear-sky and total-sky atmospheric conditions based on scene-specific average fluxes.
• Studying spatial patterns of radiative energy based on data sorted into 2.5-degree regional bins.

Strengths

• Data collection is ongoing from multiple CERES Flight Models on Terra and Aqua platforms.
• Fluxes are averaged and sorted by 2.5-degree spatial regions, day number, and local hour.
• The product includes both daily average fluxes estimated from hourly data and overall monthly averages.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected through CERES-Flight Model 1 (FM1) and FM2 on Terra and FM3 and FM4 on Aqua.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:58:37.305898; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage, sorted into 2.5-degree spatial regions.