Principal Investigator (PI): Seiji Kato, NASA's Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC)
The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) TOA and surface radiative flux records have recently eclipsed the 10-year time series threshold. Similar broadband instruments (scanner) also made measurements from November 1984 through February 1990 (ERBS), from February 1985 through January 1987 (NOAA9), and from November 1986 through May 1989 (NOAA10) under Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE). In addition, an ERBE/ERBS nonscanner record spanned nearly 20 years, bridges ERBE scanner and CERES measurements. Two other ERBE nonscanner made measurements from February 1985 through December 1992 (NOAA9) and from October 1986 through November 1994 (NOAA10).
We propose to recalibrate the ERBE nonscanners and produce radiometrically consistent top-of-atmosphere (TOA) shortwave and longwave irradiance level 3 products. In addition, using nonscanner- and scanner-derived TOA irradiances as a constraint and based on ERBE and Global Energy and Water Exchanges Surface Radiation Budget (GEWEX SRB) modeled surface irradiance products, we propose to produce level 3 surface irradiance products that are consistent with observed TOA irradiances in a framework of 1D radiative transfer theory. Furthermore, based on these TOA and surface irradiance products, we will develop a data product that contains the contribution of atmospheric and cloud property variability to TOA and surface irradiance variability.
All algorithms used in the process are based on existing CERES algorithms. The proposed project utilizes knowledge gained in the last 10 years through CERES data analyses and apply the knowledge to existing data to develop long-term (nearly 30 years) consistent and calibrated data product (TOA irradiances at the same radiometric scale) from multiple missions (ERBS and CERES). All data sets produced by this proposed work will be available from NASA's Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC).