CERES Terra FM1: Monthly Gridded Radiative Fluxes and Clouds

Edition2F data from the CERES FM1 instrument on the Terra satellite, launched December 18, 1999. The product contains regional averages of instantaneous radiative fluxes at the top-of-atmosphere, surface, and atmospheric profile levels, along with cloud parameters, averaged monthly over 1-degree spatial regions and by observation hour. It is a key component of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) program.

Use Cases

• Modeling regional radiative energy balance based on averaged TOA, surface, and atmospheric fluxes.
• Analyzing cloud property distributions based on column-averaged cloud parameters.
• Studying diurnal patterns of atmospheric radiation based on data sorted by Universal Time hour.
• Investigating cloud height categories based on atmospheric intervals defined at 700-, 500-, and 300-hPa levels.

Strengths

• Data collection for this product is complete, indicating a finalized dataset.
• Provides averages for four atmospheric levels (TOA, surface, and in-atmosphere) for both clear-sky and total-sky scenes.
• Includes cloud properties categorized into four height intervals (surface, 700-, 500-, 300-hPa, and TOA).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Contains fluxes and cloud parameters only for the hours of the satellite overpass, not full diurnal coverage.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected using the CERES-FM1 and CERES Scanner instruments on the Terra platform.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:56:11.926443; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global, gridded to 1-degree spatial regions.