Earth Radiation Budget Experiment Wide Field of View Flux and Albedo Data

NASA's Earth Radiation Budget Experiment S-10 data product contains wide field-of-view shape factor measurements of Earth's radiant fluxes and albedo. Data collection is complete, with final updates from February 1990. The dataset was produced by the LARC_ASDC organization using instruments on the ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10 satellites.

Use Cases

• Model top-of-atmosphere shortwave and long-wave radiant fluxes using the shape factor technique on averaged and hourly data.
• Analyze Earth's albedo from non-scanner instrument WFOV channel measurements spanning multiple satellites.
• Study temporal patterns in Earth's radiation budget from daily, monthly, and hourly averages contained in the fixed-length and variable-length records.
• Validate climate models against historical flux estimates derived from the active cavity radiometer channels.

Strengths

• Data collection is complete, providing a finalized historical record.
• Measurements integrate observations from three satellites: ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10.
• Contains multiple temporal aggregations: daily, monthly hourly, and monthly averages.

Limitations

• Data is temporally stale, with the last update in February 1990.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and sample data are unavailable for assessment.
• The native (NAT) format and 30-byte header may require specialized parsing tools.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) via LARC_ASDC.

Collection Method

Measurements from active cavity radiometer non-scanner instruments on ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10 satellites, processed using the shape factor technique.

Time Range

Coverage corresponds to the operational period of the ERBS, NOAA-9, and NOAA-10 satellites; exact date range is unspecified.

Freshness

Final update was 1990-02-28; dataset is archival.

Geography

Global coverage from satellite observations.