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  1. Home
  2. Essential Climate Variables
  3. Surface Radiation Budget

 

Surface Radiation Budget

The Surface Radiation Budget is a fundamental component of the surface energy budget that is crucial to nearly all aspects of climate, and needs to be monitored systematically.

  Domain: Atmosphere
  Subdomain: Surface
  Scientific Area: Energy and Temperature
  ECV Steward:  
  Products:  Upward Long-Wave Irradiance at Earth Surface, Downward Long-Wave Irradiance at Earth Surface, Downward Short-Wave Irradiance at Earth Surface

 


ECV Products and Requirements

These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).

The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Surface Radiation Budget.

Products     Upward Long-Wave Irradiance at Earth Surface Downward Long-Wave Irradiance at Earth Surface Downward Short-Wave Irradiance at Earth Surface
  (*) Unit Values Values Values
Horizontal Resolution G km 10 10 10
B 50 50 50
T 100 100 100
Vertical Resolution G   - - -
B - - -
T - - -
Temporal Resolution G h 1 1 1
B 24 24 24
T 720 720 720
Timeliness G d      
B      
T 30 30 30
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) G W m-2 1 1 1
B 5 5 5
T 10 10 10
Stability G W m-2/ decade 0.2 0.2 0.2
B 0.5 0.5 0.5
T 1 1 1

 

(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful


Data Sources

This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the GCOS Secretariat.

In Situ:

  • World Radiation Data Centre (WRDC)

http://wrdc.mgo.rssi.ru/

  • World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC), the central archive of the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN)

http://bsrn.awi.de/


Reanalysis:

  • REANALYSES.ORG (Inventory for Reanalysis)

http://reanalyses.org


Satellite:

  • Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)

http://climatemonitoring.info/ecvinventory

 

EU Copernicus

 

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