A comparison of two major Earth radiation budget data sets
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (USA)
- Research and Data Systems Corporation, Greenbelt, MD (USA)
- Colorado State Univ., Ft. Collins (USA)
The Earth radiation budget data obtained from the Nimbus 7 Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) and the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) spacecraft missions are compared for several overlapping months during the period November 1984 to January 1986. The Nimbus 7 ERB data set starts in November 1978 and extends through October 1987 (9 years). The ERBE data set starts in November 1984 with the ERBS satellite, which was supplemented by the NOAA 9 in January 1985 and the NOAA 10 in September 1986. The principal aim of the ERBE project is to obtain improved measurements of the diurnal variations in the Earth radiation budget in order to derive accurate radiation budget products. Top of the atmosphere, colocated wide field of view (WFOV) measurements are compared to estimate relative biases. Then all the time- and space-averaged products are compared. Each WFOV instrument has a shortwave and a total spectral channel. The outgoing longwave radiation is taken as the difference between the total and shortwave readings. The Nimbus 7 WFOV shortwave sensor reads about 2.5% higher than the ERBS sensor, while the Nimbus 7 total channel reads about 1% below the ERBS channel near midnight and about 1% above it near noon. A comparative study of the time- and space-averaged data products for April, July, and October 1985 and January 1986 shows that the Nimbus 7 ERB global averages agree in the mean with the combined ERBS/NOAA 9 scanner values to within 0.16% in the outgoing longwave radiation and 0.03% in the albedo. The agreement of the combined ERBS/NOAA 9 WFOV products to the ERBS/NOAA 9 scanner products is 0.17% in the outgoing longwave radiation and 3.55% in the albedo.
- OSTI ID:
- 5458983
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Geophysical Research; (United States), Vol. 95:D7; ISSN 0148-0227
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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