Advances in Satellite Observations of Earth's Radiation Budget
Abstract
The first observation of Earth's radiation budget from satellite dates back to the beginning of the satellite era in late 1950s, when the first satellite images of the planet were recorded. With each passing decade since then, the science community has made advances in instrument technology that has led to a wealth of new information about the sunlight reaching Earth, Earth's albedo, and the emission of thermal radiation to space. Until recently, however, most of the observational breakthroughs were limited to Earth's top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiation budget. The recent arrival of instruments flown under the Earth Observing System (EOS) and the A-Train constellation of satellites has dramatically changed this situation, providing new opportunities to synergistically combine an array of diverse passive and active satellite instruments to more accurately determine Earth's surface radiation budget. The new data have led to renewed discussions about our basic understanding of Earth's water and energy cycles. The goal of this presentation is to discuss how the new satellite instrument capabilities are being used by the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy (CERES) science team to provide improved observations of the TOA, surface and within-atmosphere radiation budgets and the role clouds play in modulating the energy flows. We focus on the CERES TOA and surface Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) product, which combines information from CERES, MODIS, CALIPSO, Cloudsat, AIRS, and geostationary observations all integrated in a consistent manner, and demonstrate how synergistic use of these datasets leads to improved radiative fluxes when compared with surface radiation measurements from the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN), NOAA SURFRAD, and ARM. We find that EBAF-SFC reduces the bias in surface SW downward flux by a factor of 2 compared to other satellite-based surface radiation budget datasets, show marked reductions in surface downward longwave radiation biases over polar regions, and provide consistent interannual variations in surface radiation compared to ground measurements. We use a new approach to explore how cloud radiative effects at the TOA, surface and within the atmosphere respond to variations in large large-scale atmospheric circulation strength using reanalysis data and CERES EBAF-TOA and EBAF-SFC. Results show remarkably robust relationships between observed variations in the strength of the large-scale Hadley circulation and cloud radiative effects in both ascending and descending branches, providing confidence that continued monitoring of the climate system with climate-quality observations will provide critical constraints on the cloud radiative response to future changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns.
- Publication:
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AGU Spring Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- May 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUSM.A44A..01L
- Keywords:
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- 1610 GLOBAL CHANGE / Atmosphere