CERES NOAA-20: Daily Top-of-Atmosphere Fluxes and Cloud Properties

May 1, 2018 onward, this dataset provides daily averages of Earth's radiant energy fluxes and cloud properties on a 1-degree global grid. It is produced by NASA's CERES instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite, using VIIRS imager data for scene definition and cloud retrieval. Data is distributed in monthly HDF files containing daily means for global coverage.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's energy budget based on daily 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 gridded and temporally interpolated flux data.
• Investigating cloud microphysics based on properties like optical depth, emissivity, phase, and particle size.

Strengths

• Provides global coverage on a consistent 1-degree latitude/longitude grid.
• Includes both clear-sky and total sky conditions for top-of-atmosphere fluxes.
• Cloud properties are provided for day-only and 24-hour periods.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect temporal bias inherent to the satellite's operational period starting May 2018.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data from the CERES FM-6 instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite, processed into daily averages from hourly gridded footprints.

Time Range

From May 1, 2018 onward.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 05:01:35.212663; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage.