First Global WCRP Shortwave Surface Radiation Budget Dataset

Abstract

Shortwave radiative fluxes that reach the earth's surface are key factors that influence atmospheric and oceanic circulations as well as surface climate. Yet, information on these fluxes is meager. Surface site data are generally available from only a limited number of observing stations over land. Much less is known about the largescale variability of the shortwave radiative fluxes over the oceans, which cover most of the globe. Recognizing the need to produce global-scale fields of such fluxes for use in climate research, the World Climate Research Program has initiated activities that led to the establishment of the Surface Radiation Budget Climatology Project with the ultimate goal to determine various components of the surface radiation budget from satellite data. In this paper, the first global products that resulted from this activity are described. Monthly and daily data on a 280-km grid scale are available. Samples of climate parameters obtainable from the dataset are presented. Emphasis is given to validation and limitations of the results. For most of the globe, satellite estimates have bias values between ±20 W rrr 2 and rms values are around 25 W nrr 2. There are specific regions with much larger uncertainties however.

The HelioClim Project: Surface Solar Irradiance Data for Climate Applications

“…Stations measuring SSI on the long-term are rare and satellites are an accurate way to supplement them. Based on satellite data, the project Surface Radiation Budget (SRB) offers accurate monthly means of SSI over several years and covering the whole Earth with a low spatial resolution of 1 degree [4,5].…”

Using reduced data sets ISCCP-B2 from the Meteosat satellites to assess surface solar irradiance

“…Several studies demonstrate the superiority of the use of satellite data over interpolation methods applied to measurements performed within a radiometric network (Perez et al, 1997;Zelenka et al, 1992Zelenka et al, , 1999. Based on satellite data, the project Surface Radiation Budget (SRB) is offering accurate monthly means of SSI for several years and the whole Earth with a low spatial resolution (Whitlock et al, 1995;Darnell et al, 1996). However, there is a demand for more detailed information in space and time with an emphasis for long-term time-series of irradiance.…”

Increasing the spatial resolution of gridded data by fusion with other data sets

“…They are supplied by the NASA-Langley Research Center, in the framework of the Solar Radiation Budget Project SRB [10,11]. From these data, the TL can be computed [12].…”