ERBE S-10: Earth Radiation Budget Satellite Data with Daily and Monthly Averages

Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) S-10 data provides inverted daily, monthly hourly, and monthly averages of shortwave and long-wave radiant fluxes at the top-of-the-atmosphere. The dataset was produced by NASA from instruments on the ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10 satellites using the shape factor technique. Data collection for this product is complete and it is available in Native (NAT) format.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's radiation budget based on top-of-atmosphere shortwave and long-wave flux averages.
• Analyzing temporal patterns in albedo and radiant energy based on daily and monthly aggregated data.
• Validating climate models using satellite-derived radiation measurements from the ERBE mission.
• Studying spatial variations in atmospheric radiation using data from medium field-of-view (MFOV) channels.

Strengths

• Data originates from a multi-satellite system (ERBS, NOAA-9, NOAA-10) designed for high-accuracy measurement.
• Contains averaged data across multiple temporal scales: daily, monthly hourly, and monthly.
• Uses active cavity radiometers across five channels, which suggests a focus on spectral flatness and 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 stored in a complex Native (NAT) format with fixed and variable length records, requiring specialized parsing.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected by scanner and non-scanner instrument packages on ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10 satellites.

Time Range

Coverage corresponds to the operational period of the ERBE satellites during the data month.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:00:11.277205; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage from satellite observations.