Earth Radiation Budget Time Series from ERBS and CERES Satellites

NASA's Earth Radiation Budget Satellite and CERES missions provide a calibrated, long-term record of Earth's radiation budget at the top of the atmosphere and surface. The dataset spans nearly 30 years, from 1984 onward, and is produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It applies CERES algorithms to create consistent Level 3 products for analyzing climate variability.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in top-of-atmosphere outgoing longwave radiation.
• Quantifying the contribution of cloud property variability to surface solar radiation.
• Calibrating climate models using consistent, multi-decadal irradiance time series.
• Studying the relationship between atmospheric conditions and net radiation at the surface.

Strengths

• Data spans nearly 30 years of observations, from 1984 onward.
• Products are calibrated to a consistent radiometric scale across multiple satellite missions (ERBS and CERES).
• Algorithms are based on established and tested CERES methods.

Limitations

• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date: one lists 2026-03-13, another lists 1998-12 31.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), from the ERBE and CERES projects.

Collection Method

Satellite measurements from the Wide-field-of-view nonscanner aboard the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite and CERES instruments, processed using 1D radiative transfer theory.

Time Range

Nearly 30 years, from 1984 onward.

Freshness

2026-03-13 03:00:21.829915

Geography

Global coverage from satellite observations.