ERBE S-10: Earth Radiation Budget Fluxes and Albedo from Multi-Satellite System

The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) S-10 Medium Field of View (MFOV) Numerical Filter (NF) Radiant Flux and Albedo data product contains processed satellite measurements of the Earth's radiation budget. Data collection is complete and was gathered by instruments on NASA's ERBS and NOAA's NOAA-9 and NOAA-10 satellites. The dataset includes inverted daily, monthly hourly, and monthly averages of shortwave and long-wave radiant fluxes at the top-of-the-atmosphere.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's radiation budget based on top-of-atmosphere shortwave and long-wave flux data.
• Analyzing temporal patterns in planetary albedo using daily and monthly averaged radiant fluxes.
• Validating climate models with satellite-derived medium field-of-view (MFOV) measurements.
• Studying spatial variability in atmospheric radiation using data from multiple satellite platforms.

Strengths

• Data collection is complete, providing a finalized record.
• Derived from a multi-satellite system (ERBS, NOAA-9, NOAA-10) for broader coverage.
• Includes multiple temporal aggregations: daily, monthly hourly, and monthly averages.
• Uses active cavity radiometers, which the description notes for their spectral flatness and high accuracy.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is available in a Native (NAT) format which may require specialized tools to read.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Satellite measurements from scanner and non-scanner instrument packages on ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10.

Time Range

One month per data set, with specific months not stated.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:00:00.368555; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage from satellite observations.