CERES NOAA-20: Hourly Top-of-Atmosphere Fluxes and Cloud Data

CERES SSF1deg-Hour Edition1C is a Level 3 satellite data product providing hourly, globally gridded observations of Earth's radiant energy. It contains top-of-atmosphere shortwave and longwave fluxes under clear and total-sky conditions, alongside cloud properties stratified into four atmospheric layers. The data originates from the NOAA-20 satellite's CERES FM6 instrument, begins May 1, 2018, and is produced by NASA.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's energy budget based on hourly top-of-atmosphere shortwave and longwave fluxes.
• Analyzing cloud radiative forcing based on cloud properties stratified into four atmospheric layers.
• Studying diurnal cycles of atmospheric radiation based on hourly, globally gridded data.
• Estimating surface fluxes based on top-of-atmosphere observations and co-located VIIRS imager scenes.

Strengths

• Provides hourly temporal resolution on a 1-degree global grid.
• Includes cloud properties for four distinct atmospheric layers, such as amount, height, and optical depth.
• Data collection began May 1, 2018 and is ongoing, offering a multi-year time series.

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

Gridded from CERES FM6 instrument instantaneous footprint data on the NOAA-20 satellite.

Time Range

From May 1, 2018, ongoing.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 05:01:47.259542; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage on a 1-degree latitude/longitude grid.