Clouds and the Earth's Radiant System, CERES

Description:

The ability to understand and track the Earth's energy budget is very important. The Earth's climate is controlled by the energy transfer from the sun to the land, oceans, and atmosphere. Because of this, CERES instruments were created to provide a wealth of information about the Earth's radiation balance and the role that clouds play in affecting radiative fluxes from the surface to the top of the atmosphere. The CERES instruments are on board satellites that orbit the Earth every 99 minutes. From this instrument, there are several Science On a Sphere datasets: (note: descriptions from the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio)

Scene Identification and Scene Identification Compared to Clouds: These two animations show the scene identification as measured by CERES during 29 orbits on June 20 and 21 of 2003. One contains the surface of the Earth as a background, and the other has the corresponding infrared cloud images. By comparing the incoming solar radiation with the outgoing reflected and thermal radiation, it is possible to identify the type of area being viewed, whether it is land, clouds, ocean, or ice. This scene identification is used together with the radiation flux measurements to build up a complete picture of the Earth's energy budget over time.

CERES Longwave Flux Compared to Clouds (1 mb)

Outgoing Longwave Flux Compared to Clouds: This animation shows the outgoing thermal radiation measured by CERES during 29 orbits on June 20 and 21 of 2003 over global infrared cloud images. Thermal radiation is longwave radiation and depends on the temperature of the earth, with the most intense radiation coming from the warmest regions and the least from cold clouds in the atmosphere. Although cold clouds and the cold Antarctic night regions can be seen in this data, the Earth radiates pretty uniformly in the longwave bands because the atmosphere distributes the heat of the sun to the whole planet.

CERES Shortwave Flux Compared to Clouds (1 mb)

Outgoing Shortwave Flux Compared to Clouds: This animation shows the reflected solar radiation measured by CERES during 29 orbits on June 20 and 21 of 2003 over infrared cloud images for the same period. Reflected solar radiation is shortwave radiation, and the most intense reflection comes from clouds.

CERES Solar Flux Compared to Clouds (1 mb)

Incoming Solar Flux Compared to Clouds: This animation shows the incoming solar radiation within view of CERES during 29 orbits on June 20 and 21 of 2003. Because this is incoming solar flux, its magnitude only depends on the position of the sun, and, because the orbit is synchronized with the sun, the orbit crosses the equator in the daylight at about 1:30 PM local time on every orbit. This data is not actually measured from CERES, but is calculated to compare with the outgoing radiation that CERES does measure. Note that the infrared cloud image shown under the solar data shows high infrared as dark (land) and low infrared as light (clouds).

CERES Radiation Flux Compared to Clouds (1 mb)

Net Radiation Flux Compared to Clouds: This animation shows the net radiation flux within view of CERES during 29 orbits on June 20 and 21 of 2003. The net flux is the incoming solar flux minus the outgoing reflected (shortwave) and thermal (longwave) radiation. If the flux in a region is positive, the Earth is being warmed by the sun in that region, while cooling regions have a negative flux. It is clear from the animation that the most intensive heating occurs in ocean regions with few clouds, while the second most intense are cloud-free regions over vegetated land areas. Deserts, cloudy regions, and ice caps all reflect enough solar radiation to reduce the amount of heating. Regions of night are, of course, cooling regions because there is no incoming flux at all.

Data Category

Major: Atmosphere

Keywords:

Atmosphere, NASA, satellites, CERES, energy budget

Data Set Name	ceres/longwave_clouds
Data Set Source	NASA CERES
Data Set Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Visualization Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Audio	No
Contact	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Download	FTP

Data Set Name	ceres/radiation_clouds
Data Set Source	NASA CERES
Data Set Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Visualization Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Audio	No
Contact	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Download	FTP

Data Set Name	ceres/scene_identification_clouds
Data Set Source	NASA CERES
Data Set Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Visualization Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Audio	No
Contact	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Download	FTP

Data Set Name	ceres/scene_identification
Data Set Source	NASA CERES
Data Set Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Visualization Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Audio	No
Contact	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Download	FTP

Data Set Name	ceres/solar_clouds
Data Set Source	NASA CERES
Data Set Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Visualization Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Audio	No
Contact	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Download	FTP

Data Set Name	ceres/shortwave_clouds
Data Set Source	NASA CERES
Data Set Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Visualization Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Audio	No
Contact	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Download	FTP