GEWEX SRB: Longwave Radiation Fluxes Over Land and Ocean

GEWEX Surface Radiation Budget Integrated Product Release 4 provides global fields of 26 longwave radiative parameters at the surface, top of atmosphere, and atmospheric pressure levels. The dataset includes separate land-only and ocean-only products derived from cloud, meteorological, and surface flux inputs, covering distinct historical periods. Parameters include all-sky, clear-sky, and pristine-sky upward and downward fluxes.

Use Cases

• Analyzing outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) trends based on all-sky and clear-sky TOA upward fluxes.
• Modeling atmospheric heating profiles using upward and downward fluxes at the tropopause, 200hPa, and 500hPa levels.
• Studying surface energy balance over land using local solar time-averaged surface flux data.
• Investigating cloud radiative forcing by comparing all-sky, clear-sky, and pristine-sky conditions.
• Validating climate models with diurnal cycle data from UTC-averaged 3-hourly ocean fluxes.

Strengths

• Contains 26 distinct longwave radiative parameters for comprehensive energy budget analysis.
• Provides data on three sky conditions (all-sky, clear-sky, pristine-sky) across multiple atmospheric levels.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals established importance and curation.

Limitations

• Conflicting temporal coverage: land-only data spans July 1983–December 1987, while ocean-only data spans January 2010–June 2017.
• Column names and exact data structure are not provided in any source description.
• The dataset is split into separate land-only and ocean-only products due to missing key inputs in the main integrated product.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Derived using a Longwave algorithm with inputs from ISCCP HXS (clouds), ISCCP nnHIRS (meteorology), Landflux/SeaFlux (surface), and MERRA-2.

Time Range

July 1983 through June 2017

Freshness

2026-04-10 03:19:56.224425

Geography

Global (land-only and ocean-only fields)