CERES Terra FM1: Monthly Gridded Satellite Fluxes and Clouds

CERES Monthly Gridded Single Satellite Fluxes and Clouds Terra FM1 Edition2C is a NASA Earth Observing System data product. It contains regional averages of instantaneous radiative fluxes and cloud parameters, sorted by 1-degree spatial regions and observation hour, derived from the CERES-FM1 instrument on the Terra satellite. Data collection for this product is complete.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's radiation budget based on Top-of-the-Atmosphere (TOA), surface, and in-atmosphere flux averages.
• Analyzing cloud property distributions based on cloud height categories defined at 700-, 500-, 300-hPa, and TOA boundaries.
• Studying regional climate variability based on 1-degree spatial region averages of satellite overpass data.
• Comparing clear-sky and total-sky radiative scenes based on mean adjusted fluxes at four atmospheric levels.

Strengths

• Data collection is complete, indicating a finalized dataset.
• Product is part of the CERES program, a key component of NASA's Earth Observing System.
• Includes averages for four distinct atmospheric levels and four cloud height categories.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data only represents hours of satellite overpass, not continuous temporal coverage.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

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

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 05:03:23.991070; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage based on satellite observations.