11th Conference on Satellite Meteorology and Oceanography

Monday, 15 October 2001
An alternative long term OLR data set
Christopher Collimore, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; and D. E. Waliser, G. L. Smith, T. D. Bess, D. F. Young, D. W. Martin, and K. A. Bush
A new, 23-year record of Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) is created using data from Nimbus 6 and 7 and from ERBS. All three satellites housed the ERB Wide Field of View instrument, the source of the OLR measurements. Comparison is made to the NOAA OLR data set. Both records are nearly the same length, but the NOAA record consists of data from 11 different satellites, many of which have different equatorial crossing times. Thus the Nimbus/ERBS record offers fewer interannual biases due to satellite and equatorial crossing time changes.

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