Earth Radiation Budget Satellite Flux and Albedo Measurements

NASA's Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) produced this S-10 data product measuring Earth's radiant fluxes and albedo. It contains processed hourly and monthly averages of shortwave and long-wave radiation at the top of the atmosphere. Data collection is complete and was generated by the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center from multi-satellite observations.

Use Cases

• Model validation by comparing simulated top-of-atmosphere fluxes against the observed shortwave and long-wave radiant fluxes.
• Trend analysis of Earth's albedo using the processed monthly averages over the operational period of the ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10 satellites.
• Spatial analysis of radiation budget components using the wide field-of-view (WFOV) channel data covering horizon-to-horizon views.
• Temporal decomposition of energy fluxes by analyzing the individual hour box estimates contained in the variable-length records.

Strengths

• Multi-satellite system data from ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10 platforms.
• Contains both hourly and monthly averaged data for temporal analysis.
• Derived using a documented shape factor technique (Smith et al. 1986).

Limitations

• Data collection ended in 1990, limiting analysis to historical periods.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and geographic granularity are unknown.
• Data structure involves complex scaling with 67 and 26 scale factors across two record types.

Provenance

Source

NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center (LARC_ASDC).

Collection Method

Measurements from active cavity radiometers on scanner and non-scanner instrument packages aboard satellites.

Time Range

Coverage spans the operational period of the ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10 satellites, with data collection complete by 1990.

Freshness

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Geography

Global coverage from satellite observations with horizon-to-horizon (WFOV) views.