Top-of-atmosphere Radiation Budget and Global Mean Sea Surface Temperature

The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) observations of global top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative energy fluxes and the Met Office Hadley Centre sea ice and sea surface temperature data sets (HadISST) for the period March 2000-December 2013 were used to examine inter-annual variations between deseasonalized global mean TOA radiations and sea surface temperatures (GMST) by applying the correlation technique. There are a negative contemporary correlation between reflected shortwave radiation (RSW) and GMST and a positive one between outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and GMST, which resulted in a week contemporary correlation between TOA downward net radiation (NET) and GMST. When NET leads GMST one year, the correlation was positive (0.3). When NET lags GMST 6 months, correlation was negative (-0.4). Tendency of GMST from this year to the next year was predicted using annual mean NET of this year with the accuracy of 0.034 K/yr (one sigma).