The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) consists of five broadbad scanning radiometers on three Earth-orbiting satellites, TRMM, Terra and Aqua (scheduled for launch in 2002). The CERES instruments measure reflected sunlight and Earth-emitted radiation from the top of the atmosphere to the Earth's surface. Cloud properties are determined using simultaneous measurements from both the TRMM Visible and Infrared System (VIRS) and the Terra and Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS).

The CERES data are processed, archived, and distributed at the Atmospheric Sciences Data Center at NASA's Langley Research Center. The Data Center currently has available the CERES Bi-Directional Scans (BDS) product which contains instantaneous Level-1B filtered broadband radiance measurements for total, shortwave, and window channels. CERES has released versions of three ERBE-like products to provide a long-term data set of continuous measurements of the Earth's radiation budget. Other CERES data available include the Single Scanner Footprint TOA/Surface Fluxes and Clouds (SSF), the Clouds and Radiative Swath (CRS), the Monthly Gridded TOA/Surface Fluxes and Clouds (SFC), and the Monthly TOA/Surface Averages (SRBAVG) products.

Data, documentation and other information for CERES are available at the Data Center's web site: http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/