The Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget edition 1 data release

The Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget is the first instrument to measure the earth radiation budget from a geostationary orbit. This allows a full sampling of the diurnal cycle of radiation and clouds - which is important for climate studies, as well as detailed process studies, e.g. the lifecycle of clouds or particular aerosol events such as desert storms. GERB data is now for the first time released as edition 1 data for public scientific use. In this paper we describe the status of the algorithms used for the edition 1 GERB data processing and the associated validation activities that have been carried out.