The newly released 5-year Terra-based monthly CERES radiative flux and cloud product

The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) project has recently released a multi-year global energy budget data set that represents a major advancement over currently available data. The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) project produced a 5-year global 2.5° gridded monthly mean radiation flux data set during the late 1980's that has become the reference database for General Circulation Models (GCM). The CERES project has provided a continuation of the ERBE record with the CERES ERBE-like product using data from the TRMM, Terra and Aqua spacecraft. The newly released 5-year Terra-based climate focused CERES monthly regional top of atmosphere (TOA) and surface radiation budget average (SRBAVG) data product has combined rigorous calibration, improved scene identification, and multi-satellite data fusion to produce a climate-accuracy data set of global 1° gridded radiative surface and TOA fluxes, cloud and aerosol properties. The instantaneous broadband calibration radiance stability is 0.1% per year, whereas the accuracy of the longwave (LW) and shortwave (SW) is better than 0.5% and 1% respectively. Improved scene identification based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) cloud retrievals are used with scene-dependent anisotropic models that are twice as accurate as ERBE. The diurnal sampling bias of the Terra (10:30 AM) sun-synchronous orbit is minimized by the inclusion of imager radiances from 5 geostationary satellites at 3-hourly intervals. The major breakthrough in this new release is the ability to eliminate geostationary calibration changes in the merged CERES and geostationary product. CERES SRBAVG shortwave and longwave fluxes have been rigorously validated and are key elements in evaluating the ability of climate models to predict both past and future climate states.

The monthly regional CERES/geostationary SW flux normalization technique insures unbiased geostationary derived broadband fluxes and will be outlined and validated. Regional monthly mean flux differences based on CERES/geostationary (GEO) data and CERES-only (nonGEO) can exceed 20 Wm-2. These regional diurnal sampling improvements will be noted. The differences between the CERES level 3 (monthly averaged) ERBE-like, nonGEO and GEO products will be discussed. The 5-year global mean SW, LW and net SRBAVG fluxes will be presented. The SRBAVG global monthly fluxes will be compared with other global broadband flux datasets at both the surface and the TOA. This presentation of the CERES SRBAVG product is complimented with an accompanying SRBAVG validation paper.