CERES ERBE-like Instantaneous Top-of-Atmosphere Fluxes from Aqua Satellite

CERES ERBE-like Instantaneous TOA Estimates Aqua FM4 Edition4 is a NASA Earth Observing System data product. It contains 24 hours of instantaneous top-of-atmosphere flux measurements from the CERES-FM4 instrument on the Aqua spacecraft, launched May 4, 2002. The product includes filtered and unfiltered radiances for total, shortwave, and window channels, converted to fluxes using Angular Distribution Models.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's energy budget based on top-of-atmosphere shortwave and longwave flux data.
• Analyzing scene-specific atmospheric radiation based on included scene identification and angular geometry.
• Studying temporal variations in radiative fluxes based on 0.01-second radiance recordings.
• Validating climate models using ERBE-like instantaneous flux estimates from satellite instruments.

Strengths

• Data collection is complete, providing a finalized record.
• Product includes both filtered radiances and unfiltered SW, LW, and WN radiances.
• Fluxes are derived using a specific scene identification algorithm and Angular Distribution Models (ADMs).
• Part of the long-running CERES mission, a follow-on to the successful ERBE mission.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected using the CERES-FM4 instrument on the Aqua spacecraft platform.

Time Range

Data collection for this product is complete; specific temporal coverage is not stated.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 05:06:57.059257; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage from the Aqua satellite in polar orbit.