Use of Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) Fast Longwave and Shortwave Flux (FLASHFlux) Data for Infrastructure Energy Use Analysis

The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) provides a suite of data products for monitoring changes in Earth's radiation budget at the top-of-atmosphere, surface and within the atmosphere together with the associated cloud, aerosol and meteorological properties. The goal is to produce a multidecadal record that is accurate and stable enough to be used for climate model evaluation and reducing the uncertainties in cloud feedback and aerosol forcing. CERES also produces low latency data products known as FLASHFlux, which are primarily intended to address the needs of the applied sciences and education communities. FLASHFlux is comprised of two data products: 1) an overpass swath Level 2 Single Scanner Footprint (SSF) data products separately for both Aqua and Terra observations, and 2) a daily Level 3 Time Interpolated and Spatially Averaged (TISA) 1-deg gridded data that combines Aqua and Terra observations. These Level 3 data products are now freely available as daily time series at user specified locations/regions via NASA's GIS-enable POWER web portal at https://power.larc.nasa.gov . POWER's focus is to provide satellite and modeled derived data supporting users in the long-term planning, optimization and monitoring of solar energy-related projects, building energy efficiency, and agricultural crop modeling. The clean energy decision support tool, entitled RETScreen Expert, directly connects to and pulls surface solar energy and meteorological quantities from POWER web portal. With nearly 600,000 registered users worldwide and availability in 36 languages, RETScreen Expert, utilizing FLASHFlux and other NASA data products, enables clean energy technology project feasibility, targeting and evaluation to support building energy efficiency improvements worldwide. This presentation provides an overview of FLASHFlux, evaluates FLASHFlux surface radiative fluxes by comparing them with surface radiative flux measurements, highlights specific examples of how these data products are used in clean energy technology projects, and discusses future plans for FLASHFlux data products.