GEWEX Radiative Flux Assessment: TOA radiation budget data results

The GEWEX Radiative Flux Assessment (GEWEX-RFA) is an international scientific project commissioned by the GEWEX Radiation Panel to examine the current state of both the top of the atmosphere (TOA) and the surface Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) data set and to give recommendations for future improvements of these climate data records. Earth radiation budget data producers from various institutions around the globe have responded to the GEWEX-RFA data request and submitted their scientific data set into the GEWEX-RFA archive. This presentation will focus on comparisons of the TOA radiation budget data sets in this archive at regional, zonal, tropical and global scale. The variables of interest include incoming solar radiation, outgoing longwave radiation, reflected shortwave radiation, and net radiation for both all-sky and clear-sky conditions. Regional and regional difference map will be utilized to highlight areas of similarity and disagreement among these data sets. Zonal profile will be employed to examine the representation of the north-south TOA radiative energy gradient given by various data sets in the GEWEX-RFA archive. Tropical mean and global mean statistics will be used to summarize both the current understanding and the uncertainty associated with the TOA radiation budget data.