Science Data Processing and Distribution of Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) data for the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP)

The CERES project at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) provides critical cloud and Earth radiation budget climate data records (CDRs) to support global climate change research. CERES has produced over 30 Instrument years of data from TRMM, Terra, and Aqua, and is preparing to collect, calibrate, process and distribute data from CERES Flight Model 5 on the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP). A complex system of algorithm development, data collection, processing, archive and distribution is being developed to manage science data from CERES on NPP. A new state-of-the-art data archival and distribution system called Archive - Next Generation (ANGe) has also been developed at the Langley Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) and now supports efficient data ingest, archive, and distribution for CERES. The CERES data system integrates data from multiple sources to produce an extensive set of high quality climate data records. For NPP, CERES data will be fused with clouds and aerosol information obtained using VIIRS radiance and geolocation data, making accurate and stable calibration of VIIRS radiances critical to maintaining high quality CERES CDRs. New science processing algorithms will provide improved clouds and aerosol information that feed flux calculations and time and space averaging, and will be applied to processing CERES NPP data. A more robust ground calibration campaign has also been developed for the CERES sensors. The addition of CERES data from NPP will extend Earth radiation budget climate data records well into the next decade. This paper will describe the data flow, science data processing, and distribution of CERES data from NPP.