GEWEX SRB Rel-4: Global Surface Radiation Budget Fluxes

July 1983 through June 2017 provides the temporal coverage for this integrated product of the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) Surface Radiation Budget (SRB) project. It contains global fields of shortwave and longwave radiative parameters at the surface, top of atmosphere, and atmospheric pressure levels, derived from satellite inputs like ISCCP cloud data and SORCE solar irradiance. The dataset includes all-sky, clear-sky, and pristine-sky fluxes, cloud fraction, and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR).

Use Cases

• Validating climate model radiative transfer schemes based on satellite-derived all-sky and clear-sky fluxes.
• Analyzing trends in surface solar radiation (global dimming/brightening) using the long-term (1983-2017) time series.
• Estimating photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) for vegetation and carbon cycle studies.
• Calculating cloud radiative forcing using the provided pristine-sky and all-sky flux comparisons.
• Studying the diurnal cycle of radiation using the 3-hourly monthly averages provided in UTC.

Strengths

• Long temporal record spanning over three decades (July 1983 to June 2017).
• Integrates multiple authoritative satellite inputs (ISCCP, SORCE TIM, MERRA-2).
• Provides radiative fluxes under all-sky, clear-sky, and pristine-sky conditions for detailed analysis.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals importance and curation.

Limitations

• Column names and exact data structure are not specified in the provided metadata.
• The longwave land-only product has a significantly shorter temporal range (July 1983 to December 1987) than the main shortwave product.
• Metadata for the longwave product is incomplete, lacking tags, size, row count, and license information.

Provenance

Source

NASA World Climate Research Programme/Global Energy and Water-Cycle Experiment (WCRP/GEWEX) Surface Radiation Budget (SRB) Project, processed by LARC_ASDC.

Collection Method

Derived from satellite remote sensing algorithms using inputs from ISCCP (clouds/radiance), SORCE TIM (solar irradiance), and other atmospheric datasets.

Time Range

July 1983 through June 2017

Freshness

2026-04-10 03:12:00.290081

Geography

Global (land-only for the specific longwave daily average product)